


Vampyre

by ElenaCee



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Crack Treated Seriously, M/M, Mild Gore, POV Alternating, Pre-Slash, Vampire Sherlock, Victorian Sherlock Holmes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-28
Packaged: 2018-05-13 18:41:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5713000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElenaCee/pseuds/ElenaCee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The unthinkable happens to Sherlock Holmes. Will the famous partnership survive this monumental change?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Living Dead

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted from Livejournal.

**Prologue**

 

My breath sounded overly loud in the small, dark room. Amidst my worry and confusion, a corner of my mind that had always been attuned to my friend noticed that I could no longer hear Holmes’ breath, and I had no idea when it had stopped – when it all began, or only a few minutes ago.

The skin beneath my hands, when I finally was close enough to touch, was cold. It warmed slightly to my touch, then chilled again. Like a dead man’s.

He raised his head at my touch. “Let me go, Watson,” he whispered, a black, slim shape in the gloom, eyes glinting in what little light there was. Or were they glowing?

“No.”

He shuddered. “I shall… harm you if you don’t.”

I looked at the metallic shine of the manacle around his left arm that attached him to a lamp fitting in the wall, praying both would hold. I had no idea how strong he would grow, or how fast. All I knew was that I could not allow him to leave this room. Who knew what might happen out there, to him or to others?

“You won’t kill me,” I repeated, surprised at the calm in my voice but not at the words I said. “That’s all that matters.”

He groaned. “I can smell you, Watson. It’s getting harder to resist… Heavens, I’m so hungry.”

I moved closer to him, eliciting another groan, and used my free hand to undo my necktie. “Then do it. I can stand to lose a little blood if it will help you.”

“No! Let me go. I beg you.” The plea was torn out of him, his voice almost unrecognisable. But at the same time, he leaned in as if unable to help himself.

“No.” The thought of someone else being allowed to sustain him, to bring the colour back to his dead white skin, was abhorrent. “I shall be there for you, Holmes. As I have always been. Drink from me.”

He made a sound between a groan and a cry. Then his free arm, stronger than it ever had been, was about my shoulder and head, tilting my neck just so; there was a sharp pain that instantly turned into the most intense pleasure, his lips were upon my skin, cold as ice, and then the sucking started; small, desperate, needy sips, again and again and again.

I nearly swooned, not from blood loss, but from the intensity of sensation. I wanted it never to stop. His lips against my neck warmed; the hand holding me no longer felt as if it were lifeless, and, pressed against my chest as he was, I could feel his stilled heart start beating again.

I was giving my life to him, making him live again. I could have wept with the joy of it.

 

* * *

 

**Chapter I: The Living Dead**

 

The whole extraordinary affair had begun, like so many before it, with Holmes accepting a case, this time one of theft. While theft of an object of negligible value was normally not something that attracted him, in this case the circumstances were quite extraordinary. The object in question – a clerical artefact – had, to all intents and purposes, been stolen from under the nose of the priest who had been present in his church in Whitechapel the whole time yet had seen nothing. And so, Holmes threw himself into the investigation, one, as it turned out, necessitating him to stay away from Baker Street for many hours per day.

What an inauspicious beginning, and how unutterably incredible its outcome! None of the investigations my friend had handled before this, and indeed nothing in our combined experience, could possibly have prepared us for the consequences. Even now, I hesitate to put it all down upon paper, for my patient readers will surely be hard-pressed to credit this tale. I was there, yet there are times when I myself can hardly believe it happened.

I was not involved in the beginnings of this particular case, so I cannot recount the particulars except for what I have already stated. My friend’s investigations called upon him to spend much of his time in any one of his various disguises which he used to hide his own formidable identity from the lower classes whenever he needed to move among them. I had gathered, from one of his infrequent remarks, that he was using as a base of operations one of his bolt-holes, of which he had four or five spread over all of London. “Not something you can help me with, my dear Watson – it’s all tedious gathering of minute indications. Never fear that I shall call upon you, as always, when things do become interesting.”

So I waited, and I thought it not unusual when he did not return one night, or the next, but I did grow worried when his disappearance extended over the third day. While it was not unlike Holmes to stay away even for this long, he usually did find the time to send a message or telegram assuring me that all was well with him.

In the absence of other sources of information, I paid particular attention to the newspapers, but they offered no indications as to Holmes’ doings, but neither did they report anything that would give cause for concern. This did not reassure me much, however, and by the fifth day I was quite frantic. Mrs. Hudson, our inestimable landlady, even went so far as to make me her best trifle – which showed me how much the state of my self-control must truly have deteriorated -, but even that failed to soothe me, much to our mutual consternation.

It was only late in the evening of the seventh day after I had last seen Holmes that I finally received a sign of life. Mrs. Hudson handed in a telegram, which I tore open eagerly, expecting a summons to his side, or a laconic message of well-being and admonishment not to worry.

Instead, I found that the sender was a complete stranger. “Mutual friend very ill STOP [it ran]. Come immediately to…” and then it gave an address in one of the vilest parts of Whitechapel. It was signed “Shinwell Johnson”.

I was in hat and coat and halfway out the door when a terrible thought occurred to me. What if this was a trap? What if, for once, Holmes had found himself overwhelmed by his enemies, whoever they were, and now they had sent this telegram to get their hands upon me as well? After all, I had never heard him mention the name Shinwell Johnson. I had no way to prove if the message was genuine.

But what if it was? What if Holmes really was ill and needed my help? How could I justify even wasting time deliberating what to do? I would simply have to be careful. With that thought in mind, I pocketed my service revolver.

My cab brought me to the address indicated where I could see, even before I alighted, a large, massive, red-faced man pacing up and down and stopping to look expectantly at my cab.

“Dr. Watson?” he greeted me even before I had paid the cabbie. From the tremor in his voice I noticed that he either was genuinely worried, or a very good actor. From his cloth cap to his worn worker’s clothes, he was every inch a Whitechapel resident.

“Shinwell Johnson?”

He nodded, looking at me earnestly out of bright blue eyes that fairly shone in his scorbutic face. “Please, Doctor, come inside. There’s not a moment to lose. But, by God, I’m afraid the worst has already happened.”

I followed him inside the dilapidated building. By now, all thought of this being a trap had vanished from my mind, for my new acquaintance’s manner was so serious and his worry so evident that I could not help but share in it. I latched upon the last thing he had said; the worst might have happened! “What can you tell me?” I asked his broad back as we navigated a badly lit staircase.

“I wasn’t there, Doctor, but from what little he could tell me before he lost consciousness, I gather that he was attacked by someone and left for dead. I found him not long after in a mews, lyin’ there among the rubbish like a discarded toy, and I brought him here.”

“Was he able to walk?”

“No, Doctor. He was barely alive.”

I fought down my worry. “What is your connection with him, Johnson?”

“Long story, Doctor, but nowadays I’m his eyes and ears in these parts. Known him for almost two years now. Wait, does that mean he never mentioned me?”

“No, but that is hardly surprising.”

“Hum! He mentions you a good deal, that’s for sure. I thought… Well, never mind what I thought. Here we are.” He opened a door that led into a small, darkened room.

Holmes lay motionless upon a dingy, narrow bed, eyes closed, his face looking stark white in the light that was filtering in through the dirty window. As I approached, I noticed that he must still be wearing his disguise, for his clothes were as disreputable as those of Shinwell Johnson. Sitting down upon the bed, I reached for his wrist to take his pulse, and his eyes opened. Johnson exhaled in relief.

“Watson…?”

“Yes, Holmes, it’s me. How are you feeling? Where are you hurt?” I could see no obvious injuries, but there were some stains upon his dirty clothes that I strongly suspected to be blood. His pulse was so faint that I could not find it in his wrist, and the skin was very cold.

“What happened?” he asked, frowning. “How did I – oh.” His brows contracted further in thought, and he froze, obviously remembering.

The light was too bad for me to do any sort of decent examination, so I struck a match, thinking to find a candle to light.

Never have I had such a shock! He shrieked – yes, shrieked, in a high, thin voice such as I had never heard from him before and should not have suspected him of being capable of producing. At the same time, quick as a thought, his hand lashed out and slapped the match away to fall to the ground and extinguish itself.

“Holmes!” I cried, dumbfounded at this behaviour, but he ignored me, sitting up abruptly. I could not help but notice that, in spite of Johnson’s report and Holmes’ ghastly appearance, my friend’s movements were as energetic and abrupt as of old, if not more so. He continued to stare at me, and there was an expression in his eyes that I had never seen before, a mixture of horror and realization.

He blinked, and then his expression settled into one of determination. “Watson, what are you doing here?”

I was taken aback by the question. “I –“

“I did not send for you, and I do not appreciate this intrusion upon my work. Johnson, why did you bring him here?”

The big man blinked and exchanged glances with me, apparently as confused by Holmes’ mood as I was. “I thought –“

“While that makes a welcome change, now is not the time for undue exertion on your part. Please leave. Now. You too, Watson. I have work to do, and I should very much prefer to do it alone.”

I dug in my heels. “Holmes, if you know anything about me at all then you know that there is no way I will leave you now. I cannot find your pulse. You have been injured, and I know you well enough to tell that you are concealing from us how badly you are really feeling. I should be a sorry friend indeed if I simply left.”

Rather than relenting, he lowered his head and peered at me out of light silvery eyes from under his black brows. The effect was singularly disconcerting. “I was trying to put it delicately, but you leave me no choice. Watson, you are in the way. I have no use for you and your slow-wittedness. And you, Johnson - why are you still standing there? Get out, both of you.”

I was deeply hurt. Never, in all the time of my shared life with Sherlock Holmes, had he deliberately insulted me like this. I could not help thinking, in that moment, that maybe this was how he truly felt about me – a drag shoe that only slowed him down. With an effort, I schooled my face into stony calm and rose to my feet. “As you wish, Holmes,” I grated out. “Far be it for me to be a hindrance to your work. Come along, Johnson. We’re not wanted here.”

Dejected, angry and hurt, I led the way out of the room, but then a thought struck me, and I slowed. Johnson, too, was moving reluctantly, muttering something about the world paying with ingratitude.

In the front hall, we both halted as if by unspoken consent. “Doctor,” Johnson said, “something’s wrong here. A few minutes ago, before you arrived, I was sure he was dead. I’d have sworn to it. I was mistaken, obviously, but not even Mr. Holmes can recover so quickly from bein’ out cold like that.

I nodded, slowly. “Well, he obviously wasn’t dead, but I agree. Something is wrong. I’ll take care of it, but I think it might be best if…” I trailed off, not wanting to offend, but my companion was already on his way out.

“Don’t worry, Doctor. I’m gone.”

“Thank you!” I called after him, and then I once more ascended the stairs.

Holmes’ behaviour was so utterly unlike his usual manner that, now that I had a chance to think about it, instead of being offended by his words, I found myself even more worried. It was a ruse. It must be. Clearly, he was trying to get rid of me, and of Johnson. But why? To conceal the true state of his health? That made no sense. While he hated me fussing over him, he had never actively refused my treatment if he agreed that it was indicated.

A series of wild, improbable scenarios crossed my mind, from Holmes testing some poison that had made him appear dead for reasons known only to himself to even more fantastical explanations such as hypnotism, but I was well aware that speculation would not serve my purpose, so, with an effort, I pushed it aside.

When I approached the door, I found myself treading softly, for I could not help but anticipate Holmes’ reaction to this my blatant disregard of his express wishes. So silently did I move, in fact, that when I entered, it turned out that I had inadvertently managed to approach completely unnoticed by even his acute senses, for Holmes was sitting upon the narrow bed, barely visible in that gloomy room, elbows upon his knees and face buried in his hands, the very picture of utter despair.

With two steps, I was next to him. “Holmes, please tell me what’s wrong.”

He raised his head. His eyes looked strange, as if he were wearing kohl around them, and his expression matched his posture. The next instant, the aspect of desolation was gone, replaced by fierce anger. “Watson, I told you –“

“It’s no use, Holmes. I know now that you were merely pushing me away just then, and it will not work a second time.”

“Watson.“ He was still glaring at me.

I set my jaw and glared back.

He seemed to realise that I would not relent, and his expression changed again. “Very well, I’ll try to explain my reasoning. This is really for your best, you know. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that you can do. It’s done.” He abruptly slumped, and the despair was back in his expression. “I cannot pretend that I even begin to comprehend this thing, Watson, but I do know that I should keep away from you, and you from me.”

“But for pity’s sake, why, Holmes? What harm could being near you possibly do me?”

He raised his eyes to mine. “A good deal, I’m afraid. Believe me, I should sooner face this alone than chance to drag you down with me.”

“I do not understand. If it’s some sort of danger -”

“… I should never expect you to shirk it. I know my Watson well enough by now. But this is not danger, at least not the sort we have faced together. This is a threat to health and sanity. Yes, definitely to sanity.”

His manner was more serious than I had ever known him to be, and I felt a cold grip take hold of my heart. What could it be that made him, whom I had always known to be of almost inhuman resilience, talk in tones almost approaching fearfulness? “Tell me, Holmes.”

He nodded with a thoughtful expression. “Very well. I suppose it cannot hurt, and chances are that you will not believe me anyhow. But we must take precautions. Yes, that is quite indispensable.” He reached into the pocket of his overcoat that was lying on the foot of the bed and took out the derbies he habitually carried. Removing the key from them, he threw it away onto the threadbare carpet. With a click, he fastened one metal ring about his slim wrist, and closed the second ring about a light fitting in the wall behind him. Giving a yank, he nodded. “Quite secure. Take the key, Watson. Good. Now we may safely proceed.”

I did as he told me, mystified, but I said nothing, trusting, as always, that he would make everything clear to me.

“I should tell you where we stand, my dear Watson, but it is best simply to show you.” He held out his free hand. “You were trying and failing to find my pulse earlier. Try again. Examine me as you will, but be prepared for the unbelievable.”

I took his wrist, again feeling the unnatural coldness of his skin, and again failing to find a pulse. The carotid artery at his throat yielded the same result. Taking out my stethoscope, I listened directly to his heart - or tried to, for his chest was utterly silent.

My face must have shown my incomprehension, for he smiled a resigned smile. “Trust your senses, Watson. It is true. My heart no longer beats.”

“But that is impossible!”

“So anyone would think. And yet, it is true.”

“You must have a heart beat. Everything else is a biological impossibility. You are moving, talking. There can be no neural or muscular activity without oxygen, and that must be supplied through the blood. It’s impossible.” I was aware that I was babbling.

Holmes shared that awareness, of course, for he smiled. “Allow me to give you a demonstration. You know what a corpse looks like, don’t you. It is not something that can be faked simply lying still and holding one’s breath.”

I nodded cautiously, afraid to think where he was going with this.

“Then what do you think this is?” He slumped onto the bed and lay immobile, his eyes half open. They were glassy.

A creeping sensation gripped the back of my neck as he continued to lie silent and still, and I understood what he was trying to tell me. There was no movement in him. No amount of bodily control would be able to stop all those constant little vibrations that are caused by a living organism. I was indeed looking at the dead body of my dearest friend. “Oh my God.”

His eyes flicked to mine, the only thing moving in his still body. Now that I knew what to look for, I realized they looked dead even now. His voice was very low. “Now, do you understand, Watson? I have changed. I am no longer among the living. You must leave me, before I infect you with my evil.”

The metal of my stethoscope dug into my palms. “I cannot accept that. Even if it’s true, and you are now something other than human – and I never thought I should ever find myself uttering those words -, what makes you think that your condition is evil?”

He sat up again, something very much like pity creeping into his eyes. “Watson, do you truly not know what I’ve become?”

“All I know is that a terrible change has come over my friend, but that will not make me leave his side.“

“That’s my dear, staunch Watson,” he said, again with that sad smile. “However, you have always complied with my wishes, even when you did not agree with them. Therefore, you will comply with this one also. Let me attempt, once more, to explain. I am not breathing, I have no pulse. By any definition of the word, I am dead, except, as you so astutely noticed, I have not ceased moving. We must assume, therefore, that I am undead.”

He saw my expression and continued. “I was on the trail of the thief, Watson, when he noticed my pursuit. That in itself is quite remarkable, for you know how well I normally conceal my presence when I do not wish to be noticed. He however did notice, and he ambushed and attacked me in a mews. He was tremendously strong. He was but a single person, yet I had no hope of besting him in unarmed combat. He simply held my arms immobile as if I were no stronger than a child, and then, Watson, then he bit my neck and drank my blood until I lost consciousness. When I came back to myself, he made me drink his blood. His blood, Watson! Think! When Johnson found me, I was dying. I can but deduce that I must have been dead at some point. I came back to myself just when you were bending over me, and now, everything is different. My entire perception of myself has changed. And not only of myself.” He bent forward slightly, nostrils flaring. “I can hear your heart beating, Watson. I can smell your toilet water, the soap you used to wash your skin, the soap that was used to wash your clothes, and I can differentiate all that from the smell of your skin itself. I can see more minute details than ever before. To my eyes, this dark room is as lit by dozens of candles. And, as a last proof, I can do this.”

He stood, bent to the solid wooden bedstead upon which he had been lying, and raised the whole thing off the floor with his free arm. “In short, if someone tried to pursue me, they would suffer the same fate as I did. I have become like him, like the thief of Whitechapel. He is a vampire, Watson. And now, so am I.”

It was too much to take in. His proof was incontrovertible, and yet I found my mind quite unable to accept the evidence of my senses, at least now. Hoping there would be time for thinking later, I forced myself to form an intelligent sentence. “Very well, Holmes, let’s suppose that you are right. It still will not make me just walk away. On the contrary; it appears to me that you need a friend at your side now more than ever.”

He had sat down once more, his shackled arm twisted half up and behind him. “Oh Watson, what can I do to make you understand? I may still give the impression of a rational human being, but that is due only to the power of my will and will cease as soon as that will gives out. I am unspeakably hungry, Watson, and, if you will forgive my saying so, but you leave me no choice – you are looking intensely appetising just now.”

I swallowed, then smiled. “You are trying to shock me into leaving, Holmes. It will not work, either. I shall leave this room together with you, or not at all.”

I could not see much of his face in that gloomy room, but still I felt his eyes upon me “That is precisely what you will not do. There is nothing you can do to help me. However, as a last service to me, before our paths will part forever, you will walk out of here and not look back. And then you will do your utmost to forget me.”

In answer, I pulled up a chair and sat down. “Not an option, Holmes.”

He glared, then he slumped down upon the bed in resignation. “Oh Watson, Watson,” he whispered. “What am I supposed to do with you? Do you truly want me to kill you?”

“The Sherlock Holmes I know would never harm me, no matter what he may have become,” I stated from the bottom of my heart. “If you truly were evil as you suspect, why would you try so hard to get me to leave? Wouldn’t you rather lure me in so you can kill me?” I smiled. “Logically, you are not evil. Ergo, I’m staying.”

“Unless I were so cunning that this would be the exact conclusion I wanted you to form,” he retorted, but he was smiling also. “Very well. I can see that nothing will shift you. Promise me one thing, then.”

“Anything, Holmes.”

“Do what you can to keep me from leaving this room.” He looked at the manacle. “I cannot tell if this will hold me when the hunger grows stronger, and I have no idea what I’ll do to free myself. But whatever I do or say, Watson – you must not allow me to leave.”

“I promise.”

“Capital. And now, you will ready your service revolver and place it where you can easily get at it.”

I did so. “How did you know I had it with me?”

“I can smell it. Oh yes, the mixture of steel, gun oil and gunpowder is quite unmistakable. Now, Watson, have no compunction about using it on me if I should get loose.”

“Holmes –“

“You will promise that to me also, Watson. If I lose control over myself sufficiently to tear that fitting out of the wall, I will be a danger to you and to all the innocent people beyond that door. You are honour-bound to promise.”

I understood, of course, that he was correct. For myself, I was prepared to accept any danger that might emanate from my friend, but I could not take the same risk for any innocent bystanders. Besides, I had to hope that a gunshot would not permanently harm him, if he truly were undead. I shivered, but my voice was firm. “Very well. I promise, Holmes.”

He nodded, and slumped back against the wall. “Good. Good. And now, we wait for daylight. What will happen then shall be our incontrovertible proof that I am indeed a vampire. Only a few hours to wait, Watson.” He closed his eyes as if gathering all his willpower. “Only a few hours.”

As it turned out, however, the impulses to which he was now prey grew too strong even for his formidable mental resilience way before that. A mere hour later, he was lying on his side upon the bed, his unshackled arm wrapped about his legs, face buried in the threadbare blanket and giving every indication of being in terrible pain.

I had watched him worriedly from my position halfway across the room, but finally, I could stand it no longer.

His head snapped up as I approached. “Stay back,” he hissed. “For the love of heaven, Watson, stay away from me!” His eyes, wide open in his pale face, seemed to glow in the darkness. “I would not harm you for the world, my dear friend, but I cannot…” He shuddered and groaned, high in his throat. “Watson, you must go. I can’t do this for very much longer. Throw me the key, and then leave. Run as fast as you can. Now, Watson!”

For the first time in our association, I was in a position, by following his express wishes, to have to refuse one of Holmes’ orders. “I told you I won’t leave you, Holmes.”

“Then let me go,” he rasped, in a voice quite unlike his usual urbane tones. “I beg of you, Watson. Throw me the key.”

It was painful to see him like this. Despite his warning, I approached him, and he groaned again, a sound full of despair from the very depths of his being. “Don’t do this, Watson.”

But I had made my decision while I watched him fighting the hunger. I needed to keep him alive, or in whatever condition he was in now, which obviously meant that he must be fed, and there was only one way to do so that I could see.

And so I fed him with my blood, feeling him growing stronger with each drop he took from me, wrapped in a cocoon of the most perfect pleasure and contentment. It is true that he could have killed me then, and I would have offered no resistance. What better way to go, after all, than by offering up my life for my friend?

Suddenly, he wrenched himself away, panting, sobbing. “Forgive me – forgive me!”

The abrupt loss of pleasure was nearly painful, but I forced a smile. “I wanted it, Holmes.”

He turned. Now I was certain that his eyes were indeed glowing in the dark. “You know nothing, Watson,” he hissed. “I, too, wanted it, but in another way. I wanted it to go on and on. I wanted to make you mine. Like me!” He pulled up his long legs and hugged them, burying his face upon his knees. “I could practically feel it, how to do it, as if some… something within me was guiding me. I would have killed you. My dearest friend.” He raised his head. “That would truly be the cruellest trick that fate could possibly play upon me – making me responsible for your death!”

“But you did not kill me. You stopped. It’s all right.” And indeed it was. I felt fine. The puncture wounds that should be there had closed already, or at any rate I could not feel them when I passed my fingers over my neck.

Puncture wounds! I was suddenly filled with the desire to light a lamp and finally see Holmes as he was now, appreciate fully the change in him, but I still remembered his violent reaction to the sight of a lighted match. This was not the time to frighten him. “You will find the strength to stop again. We can do this. Together.”

He stared at me, his eyes like glowing coals. “What are you suggesting, Watson? That you will let me feed upon you like some perverse leech until I do manage to kill you? I will not! I should rather starve to death. Final death.” He paused, then repeated, “Final death…” in a voice so full of longing that, for the first time since this extraordinary chain of events had started, I experienced true fear for him.

I knew, of course, that a large part of my confidence was due to pure bravado, and that I had not yet grasped the full implications of our situation. But no matter the source, I would put my strength at his disposal as I had my blood. There simply was no other way.

 

* * *

 

Newly strengthened and calmed, Holmes remained quiet and motionless upon the seedy bedstead, his arm still shackled, and awaited dawn with the steadfast expectation characteristic of the man. I sat upon the chair opposite, feeling slightly lightheaded after my bloodletting, and considered and discarded topics for conversation. After all, being in the extraordinary situation that we were in, what could we possibly talk about?

Finally, Holmes broke the silence. “There are two ways this can play out, my dear Watson,” he said softly. “Firstly, dawn will come and go, and nothing will happen. If that is the case, all is well. I can feel a mighty fool, and we can continue our lives the way we have. Secondly, sunrise will confirm my theory and prove that I am now among those legendary undead that we call vampires. In that case, you will have to decide what to do, for it would surely be the height of carelessness to allow a bloodsucking monster to live under the same roof as yourself.”

“Holmes…”

“I confess I am not very knowledgeable about the subject,” he went on, ignoring my interjection, “but I seem to recall that there is a rather failsafe way of doing away with a vampire. A weighted stick and a sharpened log should do the job quite nicely.”

“Never.”

He saw my determined expression and smiled sadly. “My dear Watson,” he said, much moved. “That ever a man should have a friend such as you. I never –“ He broke off, his voice failing, and looked away.

I remained perfectly still, amazed at this sudden and profound insight into the heart he usually guarded so closely – the same heart, I could not help thinking, that he was asking me to pierce with a wooden stake in order to protect myself from him.

The next instant, his head rose again, and his self-control was as absolute as before. “Nevertheless, there will be no way around it, so let us spend what may be my last hours upon this earth in a congenial manner. Go ahead and smoke, if you want to. I believe that, if I am prepared, I shall be able to withstand the sight of a naked flame.”

It was chilling to hear him talk in that calm, almost disinterested fashion about his possible demise. However, the realisation that he would not join me in a smoke the way he had done countless times before, that he would in fact have to bring himself to face the sight of fire as if it were a deadly snake, finally brought home to me the fact that he was indeed changed. This was not merely a phase, or Holmes involved in a complicated strategy designed to elicit some result. This was real.

A powerful impulse took hold of me, gripping my insides and obliging me to reach out to my friend, which, if brought to its conclusion, would no doubt have led to an embarrassing display of maudlin sentiment on my part, and possibly on Holmes’ as well. I therefore suppressed the gesture before it could evolve fully, redirecting it to brush at the threadbare seat cover. “Holmes,” I blurted out, “you know that I have always tried to do whatever you asked of me to the fullest of my ability, but I beg you – I plead with you – not to ask this of me. Your life is –“ I broke off, reconsidering what I had been about to say, and finally ending my sentence with, “too valuable to me. Just as you do not wish to be the cause of my death, so I could never be it for you. For heaven’s sake, let’s agree to move this option to the bottom of the list, or preferably onto a whole new page. If nothing else, I am a doctor, and taking a life is anathema to me.”

He closed his eyes and opened them again after a pause. “I'm aware that I cannot force you to go against your instincts, old boy. But I sincerely hope that you will not regret this.

We fell silent after that. There was nothing more to say, and nothing to do but wait for the new day.

 


	2. Admit The Impossible

Outside, the sun was slowly rising, and the sounds of waking London were beginning to filter into the utter silence of that dingy little room. For the third time in as many minutes, I ran my hand over Holmes’ motionless form, even though I knew I would find nothing new. To all intents and purposes, he was dead. His heart was silent; his chest still. His pupils, when I peeled back his lids, did not react to the growing light. He had no reflexes.

I find it difficult to put into words the inner turmoil that held me in its sway during that hour. All my life, I had tried to reconcile a family background largely characterised by a grandmother who had believed in fairies and pixies with my scientific education that had taught me to seek a rational explanation behind all seemingly supernatural phenomena. For many years, and certainly during my adult life, I had completely rejected the very possibility of anything existing that could not be fathomed by rational explanation, so much so that, twenty-four hours ago, I should have scoffed at the mere notion that vampires or other beings of their ilk might walk the earth. But now, with my best friend lying lifeless in front of me, I found that if I did not admit the fantastical explanation he had offered, I should instead have to accept the fact that he was, in fact, dead. In order to keep my friend, I had to open my mind to the possibility of his being a part of the heretofore denied supernatural world, even as my senses and medical experience urged me to fill in Sherlock Holmes’ death certificate, and to grieve.

And underneath all that, there was the lingering fear that, even allowing that he was now changed, something might somehow have gone terribly wrong and he still might not wake up with the dusk, and that this state of near death would be permanent, indistinguishable from true death.

But even if Holmes had been correct, if all of this fantastical business was true and he would wake up with the setting sun, then I still had many hours of this terrible doubt ahead of me. I decided I needed to distract myself, but how could I do that when all I could think of was how he had fought that strange paralysis that had come over him with the first rays of the rising sun? Refusing to lie down, he had woken me from the light sleep I had slipped into by pacing the room restlessly in the grey pre-dawn light – I had, at his request, released him from the manacles as we both agreed that he had regained his control completely -, until suddenly, almost from one second to the next, his legs had given way underneath him, and he had barely managed to crawl to the bed before complete unconsciousness overtook him.

I had arranged his crumpled limbs, shocked to find the feel of his cold flesh so very similar to that of a dead body, into the position in which he now lay. The only consolation I had was that I could observe nothing akin to rigor mortis or any of the other processes that occur in a newly dead body during the first few hours after death. It seemed that, physically, Holmes was suspended in that very moment when the heart has newly failed; when the eyes are still clear and the skin still supple.

Curious, I pushed back his upper lip, and there I found the proof I had both dreaded and hoped for. Holmes’ canines were visibly elongated and had each grown to a sharp point that fitted nicely between his lower teeth, as if they had always been meant to be like this. I remembered how those canines had pierced my skin, and I shivered with a sensation I preferred not to examine.

At that moment, there was a knock at the door, and Shinwell Johnson stuck his head in. His eyes alighted upon the motionless figure of Sherlock Holmes, and he pushed his big body through the doorway. “What happened, Doctor?”

I stood, still uncertain how much I could trust this man, and tried to block his view of my friend’s body. “It’s… complicated,” I evaded the question.

He nodded sagely. “Always is with him.” He halted and visibly kept himself from craning his head to peer past me. “Anything I can do?”

I vacillated briefly between confiding in him and sending him away without a word, but then I decided upon a compromise. After all, I did need help. “Yes, Johnson, there is something you could do for me. Go to the nearest public library and fetch me all the books you can find on vampires.”

He stared at me. “Vampires.”

“Just so.” I stared back, defying him to say anything.

“Blimey, Doctor.” Now, he did peer past me, and his eyes widened. “Doctor!”

“I know, Johnson.”

“No! Doctor, he’s – he’s burning!”

“What!”

I whirled, and indeed, Holmes’ left hand, illuminated by a slanting ray of sunlight, seemed to be sizzling and smoking. I rushed over and yanked the limp hand out of the sun while Johnson, with a coolness and presence of mind that made me appreciate his presence for the first time, drew the blinds.

Lighting a candle, I found that the injury looked like a severe burn, such as might be caused by red-hot metal. But the truly eerie thing was that Holmes had not reacted in the slightest to being subjected to what must be considerable pain, and even now, his face was as still and his expression as serene as before.

I was at a complete loss for words. Johnson, meanwhile, slowly walked back to the door. “Vampires,” he repeated. “I’ll see what I can find.” The door closed behind him, and he was gone.

Alone once more, I found my heart-rate slowly receding to normal levels. Holmes’ hand was burnt. I realised as I held the slim wrist in my own hand that my mind was attaining that curious calm that comes with shock. Burnt by sunlight. It was an atypical burn, with no swelling of the tissues, no seepage of serum. It looked exactly like a burn acquired _post mortem_. A vampire. Sherlock Holmes, a vampire, vulnerable to sunlight.

Suddenly, the emotions I had been keeping in check all through the night overwhelmed me. It was not horror I felt, even though that would probably have been the most sensible reaction. It was not even fear or disgust, or alienation in the sense that I did not know Holmes anymore. Rather, it was the intense desire to keep my friend, even through something as incredible as this, to not let him be taken away from me by this shocking fate, that made me throw my arms around him and hold his unresisting body, cold as it was, to my breast.

And as I held him thus, I felt his stilled heart give one single beat.

That brief contraction had the enormous effect of instilling my soul with blazing hope, and it also helped allay the budding hysteria that had, for an instant, threatened to overwhelm me. I took a deep breath, laid Holmes back down and arranged his limbs, resisting the urge to bandage his burned hand. There was, after all, hardly a danger of infection in an undead body. And it was that very thought that told me that I had, finally, accepted the impossible.

But now was not the time for despair, rather for thinking and planning. I stared down at the helpless body of my friend. If this was the way things were going to be from now on, with Sherlock Holmes dead during the day and undead at night, how on earth was he supposed to continue his work? The protection he would obviously need during the day I should gladly provide, but what about food? Could he even eat normally anymore? I had a feeling that this was another thing that had changed; that he would never again eat the oysters or pâte de foie gras he loved so. Again, I was more than willing to put myself at his disposal, but, realistically, if I wanted to keep my strength, I could not hope to be able to sustain him if his need for blood increased or even remained at the current level. But maybe it would decrease with time? There was so much I did not know, and I fervently hoped that the books Johnson was fetching would answer some of those questions.

 

* * *

 

Hours later, following another brief nap, I had devoured all the passages and paragraphs in all the books that Johnson had managed to unearth, but I found myself no wiser than before. It all was obviously mere recounting of legends and anecdotes that dated back decades, if not centuries - superstitious drivel of men allegedly being made into vampires by black cats jumping over their dead bodies, of curious sounds from graves due to the normal processes of decomposition, of elongations of teeth that were obviously due to scorbutic conditions, of shunning of daylight that I should put down to that sensitivity to sunlight that sometimes occurs in unfortunate individuals, but with none of the dramatic results I had myself observed, and at least three cases of apparent death with the poor victims interred alive. None of the alleged witnesses had, I was convinced, truly seen a vampire. It appeared that I was the first.

This meant that either there were not many vampires about, or that they were so good at concealing themselves that, beyond these vague accounts that might easily be explained by science, there was no evidence of them existing. It also meant that I should not have much help to offer my friend in this way; nothing except my protection.

There was a rustling sound next to me. Looking up, I beheld Holmes’ cool gaze for a second, before he raised his burned hand to his eyes.

“A ray of sunlight struck your hand,” I supplied before he could ask.

He nodded as if he had expected it. “So. We have all the proof we might possibly need.” His voice was as toneless as I had ever heard it.

I nodded. “Are you hungry?” I asked, remembering his behaviour of the night before.

He looked away. “Ravenous. But if that was an offer, Watson, I'm sure that you as a medical man know that repeated, excessive blood loss is dangerous. I’ll manage.”

I looked at his hollow eyes and sunken cheeks, but said nothing. What chance, after all, would I have of convincing him to take nourishment now that he was in full control, when it had been next to impossible before?

Holmes, meanwhile, sat up and took in my appearance and that of the room with one of those all-comprehensive looks that I knew so well, observing and deducing the things I had been doing while he was – dead. “Not much luck, eh, Watson?” he remarked with a jerk of his thumb towards the stack of books in the corner, obviously striving for normalcy.

I, too, did my best to act my usual staunch self. “No indeed. Your experience, at least according to the literature, is unique.”

He smiled, grimly. “Just my luck. You yourself seem to be as robust as of old, I observe.”

“Never felt better in my life.” It was not quite the truth. I was hungry, and thirsty; but the effects of my blood loss had lessened.

“Excellent,” he said with visible relief. “There was the remote possibility that I might have unwittingly turned you into a vampire by feeding from you, but I deduce that an exchange of blood is needed for that.”

I swallowed. That possibility had never occurred to me.

“Well,” Holmes went on. “Seeing as my investigation of the theft has acquired an unexpected slant, I must reconsider my position. We might as well do that in Baker Street.”

And this, I mused, was the closest he would ever get to admitting that he was quite out of his depth.

He was silent during our journey back, first stoically walking next to me through the teeming throngs of humanity and then looking out of the window of the cab we had found when we reached a broader thoroughfare. I could see that he shot searching glances at each face we encountered, even if I did not know what he expected to find – maybe the thief of Whitechapel, his maker, or maybe some reaction to his altered state. But there was no one he recognized, and neither did the passers-by seem to notice anything amiss with my friend.

Back in our rooms, we found that Mrs. Hudson, with that uncanny sense she seemed to have acquired over the years, had laid out a cold supper. My mouth watered and my stomach growled, for I had eaten nothing all day, but Holmes just made a curious, tormented sound and disappeared into his bedroom.

This seemed to settle the question of whether he would be able to eat normal food. I briefly thanked our stars that Mrs. Hudson had not been present to witness this apparent slight to her cooking, and ate with all the heartiness that a day’s fast will give a man.

Holmes reappeared presently, apologising for his sudden flight and looking remarkably composed, now dressed in his normal clothes with a fresh collar and exhibiting the effects of water and a comb. Looking at him so fresh and sleek, I immediately felt seedy and disreputable.

I also felt compelled to add my support to his show of strength. Pushing away my plate, I rose and fetched my medical bag.

“Let us approach this scientifically,” Holmes was saying. “There still remains the possibility that this is nothing more than an outlandish disease, transmitted by blood.” He began to roll up his sleeve.

For once, I had been able to follow him precisely. “A blood sample should at least be able to tell us if there is infection, and if so, if it’s a strain of bacteria that’s causing it. Might I –“

“You may borrow my microscope, Watson,” Holmes said at the same time.

We both smiled, but it was a grim and cheerless smile in Holmes’ case.

I found, firstly, that it was impossible to take a blood sample from my friend by means of a syringe. His skin appeared to have hardened, even though it still felt the same, and the metal needle could scarcely penetrate it. Finally, I had to apply a small cut with one of my scalpels, and even that healed before my eyes within seconds, which hardly gave me time to collect enough blood.

Secondly, I found no bacteria within Holmes’ blood or interstitial liquid. The blood looked normal, at least from what I could observe at the highest magnification available. While there still might be a virus involved that I would be unable to see, his white cell count was unremarkable, which led me, with much regret, to exclude the possibility of infection.

Holmes received my conclusions with his usual stoic calm. “I had suspected as much. This is, quite beyond doubt, a supernatural phenomenon, Watson. If we are to seek a remedy, we must do so among supernatural means. And I should never, by all that’s wonderful, have expected to ever utter those words.”

“But how do you propose to find these supernatural means? There’s nothing in the literature on how to reverse this change, only on how to destroy a – a vampire. And we have agreed to discount that possibility, haven’t we?”

“Nothing in the books,” Holmes agreed, ignoring, I was concerned to note, my last sentence. “Therefore, I shall seek the answer from one who should know; the one who made me. And no, you will most certainly not accompany me, my dear Watson. There’s hardly anything he can do to me now, but you look altogether too desirable to be allowed near him.”

And before I could respond to that, the door had closed behind him.

 


	3. I, Vampire

_Holmes_

 

I escape from the sitting-room and the overwhelming smell of warm, breathing Watson barely in time to keep myself from forcing myself upon him, dismayed by the knowledge of how close a thing it was. Clearly, I am no longer safe to be around him. Ah, my dear, cherished Watson! His presence has always been a balm to my soul, so much so that being without it frequently made me feel bereft. But now, through this cursed fate that has befallen me, another element has been added. Now, and especially after the taste I had of him, I am drawn to him like a bee to honey with a longing that is both dangerous and indecent. I must remove myself lest I ruin everything.

And so I step out the front door, ignoring Mrs. Hudson’s query after the quality of her supper – something I am now in worse a position to judge than ever - and hurry up the street in the direction of the park, in order to achieve the greatest possible distance from my dear friend in the shortest possible time.

Baker Street is sufficiently busy even at this hour, however, to make it clear to me that my hunger has reached a level as to render me a danger to anyone, be it friend or stranger. I need sustenance, and quickly, if I do not wish to supply our friends at the Yard with a mystery they would be even more inadequate to solve than usually. Something, instinct or racial memory, is urging me towards the park, and I find myself unable to come up with a better idea, or even with the strength necessary to resist the urge.

As I walk, I do my utmost to close my mind to the constant flow of information about the passers-by with which my senses supply me, but it is surprisingly difficult to do so. After all, observation and deduction have become so ingrained in me that I am, at times, hardly aware I am doing it. This habit, substituted by my newly attained supernatural senses, now includes, I find, observing details on an individual’s state of health and even on the probable time they last ate, including what their meal was. A group of carpenters on their way home have quite clearly just been to a public house, where they supped on a quantity of peanuts and cheap ale. They are, to a man, more desirable to me, for some reason, than that lone clerk who has so obviously just risen from a meal of steak and kidney pie; the man exudes a repellent aura of sickness that even my current ravenous state cannot overcome. As he passes me, I realise the cause: syphilis, in its early stages, for there is no visible trace of it upon his person as yet.

As I try to catalogue all these impressions and a hundred more in an effort to distract myself from my own state, I wonder whether illnesses still have the power to affect me, and if that is the reason why I can now discern their presence. A vampire with syphilis is a ridiculous concept, but maybe, like a tsetse fly, I am a possible carrier capable of spreading the disease from one meal to the next. If true, it would mean that a single vampire would quickly spread all sorts of diseases and thus effectively kill off his prey, which is clearly an undesirable trait in a hunter. If so, and if this is the reason why I am naturally repulsed by diseased humans, this would imply some sort of natural selection process of the kind Charles Darwin recently wrote about at work on the supernatural world, and this, in turn, would mean that vampires are, in fact, part of nature and subject to at least some of its rules. The thought is a welcome one amidst all the other half-fathomed realisations that I have not yet acknowledged.

Thus engaged in fruitless but distracting mental discourse, I safely reach Regent’s Park without becoming a cause of grief for anyone who passes me - a minor victory, or at least that is what it feels like. By and large, movement seems to help keep my urges in check, so I quicken my pace as I venture deeper into the park. Something at the back of my mind tells me that there is a way for me to move even faster, if only I can get down and -

There is movement in the bushes nearby, a rustling that is so loud I can hardly believe anybody would expect to remain unnoticed while causing such a racket, and my newly improved sight can clearly discern three figures crouched in the shrubbery. Presently, they step out to confront me; two larger and a smaller man dressed in the sloppy way of the past-time thug out to improve the meagre income from his normal day’s work. The sharp smell of metal informs me about the presence of rusty knives; they are well fed if badly washed, but that last fact does not in any way detract from their attractiveness to me.

“Well, well, well, what have we here?” the smaller man, obviously their leader, drawls, and I almost sigh at the predictability of his speech. “In a hurry, are we? Well, gov’nor, just hand over your purse, and you’ll be on your way home to your wife as quickly as you please.”

I can feel my teeth lengthening in my mouth. The men are healthy, and, I find myself musing, full of warm blood. The thought gives me pause, even though this clearly is not a situation where I can afford to be distracted.

The two larger ones are circling in an effort to surround me, moving carefully in what, to them, must be almost total darkness while I can see as clearly as if it were a cloudy day.

“Gentlemen,” I feel compelled to warn them, “I strongly advise you to seek your spoils elsewhere.”

Raunchy laughter is my only response, and I find, as they, too, soon will, that it is not a good idea to anger me while I am hungry. I nimbly move out of their circle and behind the leader, who seems to be so gobsmacked by the speed of my manoeuvre that he does not react at all until I have his head in a secure hold, and then all he can do is struggle ineffectually, weaker than a child pitted against the preternatural strength I now possess.

There are shouts of surprise from his two compatriots, who draw their knives and advance. I stare at each of them in turn and tighten my hold, my senses awash with the smell and feel of the terrified human in my grip. “Run,” I suggest, first to the one, then to the other.

Then it is my turn to be surprised, for, without a word, they both turn and do just that, at speed.

But I have no time to wonder about that, for my instinct for self-preservation can be denied no longer. Finding a firm hold about my victim, I draw my lips back from my teeth – I suppose I have to call them fangs now –, locate the perfect spot upon his neck by sight and smell, and then the warm blood hits the back of my mouth and I almost swoon with the pleasure I remember from last night, when Watson allowed me to take sustenance from him.

Watson.

The thought of him brings me back to my senses. What would he say, what would be the expression upon his honest face, if he saw me like this, reduced to assaulting a man like an overgrown mosquito, and subject to base impulses that would make a molly boy blush?

This is wrong. Every instinct cries out as I withdraw from him, for my hunger is not yet appeased, but I let the man go. I cannot do this. It is an offence to human dignity. It is evil, and so am I if I do not control this.

Even when I release the tough from my hold, he does nothing to get free. Instead, he moans in protest, as if I were depriving him of something vital, and I realise that the swoon I felt must go both ways. There is a little blood upon his neck that might cause comment, so, on impulse, I lick it off, surprised to see the tiny puncture wounds close and disappear before my eyes, leaving the skin unblemished and all trace of my assault gone.

How immensely practical.

I turn the man round to face me. There is again the sense as if something else were dictating my actions as I look into his eyes, feeling my mind connect to his. “Forget me. Forget this ever happened. You were out with your friends, trying to find someone to relieve of his purse, but he fought back. You will lose consciousness, and when you wake up, this is what you remember happened. Do you understand?”

He nods, staring at me wide-eyed.

“Sleep.”

He falls to the ground as if pole-axed and promptly curls up, starting to breathe in the deep, even rhythm of sleep.

I step back into the shadows, aghast at what I have become.

Certainly no man should be allowed to have such power. What, or who, is there to stop me should I decide to just go with all these delicious dark impulses that I feel seething within me? Three men were no match for me just now. I have no doubt I could take on ten. They would not even know what has come over them. I could break five men’s necks before they see me coming and order the other five to flee, just like I did now. It was no harder than telling Watson to fetch my pipe. It’s frightening. I am frightening.

These not overly pleasant thoughts accompany me as I walk the long way to Whitechapel. I avoid taking a cab and the chance that the driver might recognize me. Besides, the night is young, and I am imbued with a restless energy that I had best walk off lest this thing inside me that is trying to do the thinking for me overwhelm my self-control. I will not drink human blood again if I can help it, no matter how strong the urge to do so may become. There must be a substitute such as animal blood. I have never been particular about my food, and I do not propose to start now.

As I reach Whitechapel, I confess to feeling safer than I ever did before while traversing the narrow alleys. There are things lurking in the darkness and always have, but now I am one of them. It is strangely exhilarating, and I am almost certain I should not enjoy the feeling, but there are other exhilarating feelings in my life that I should not enjoy and still do. I shall simply have to master this one as well.

Now, where do I find my quarry? It is my custom in such cases to put myself in his place, making what allowances I can for the personal equation, and then to imagine what I should do. In this case, I know almost nothing about him, except that he is a vampire. That in itself does not tell me much. Is he a murdering beast, subject to his animal impulses, the way I have almost been just an hour or so ago? Or does he have a moral fibre and is doing his bloody best to master the thing within him even now, just as I am trying to do? If so, he may be safely away from temptation and ensconced in his rooms, which may be anywhere. But I have to hope that they are somewhere in this district, for it is very probable that he is using Whitechapel as his hunting grounds and happened to make a meal of the pesky detective upon his trail.

Which brings me back to the matter of the theft. What would a vampire want with a clerical artefact? And why did he choose to make me like him rather than simply kill me?

But first things first. He will tell me all I want to know when I find him, and in the absence of a better plan, I resort to returning near the place where he assaulted me. I had been upon his trail for the better part of five minutes before he veered off and lured me into the mews, but from the direction he took before, I can narrow down his destination from the whole of Whitechapel to a few streets, which surely is an improvement.

As I walk along in that direction, the smell of dog assaults my senses and distracts me with a powerful reminder of my as yet barely appeased hunger. I might as well test now whether animal blood will sustain me. I have always liked dogs, but I need sustenance. Given the choice between harming a man and harming an animal, surely there is only one option.

I locate the beast quickly enough, and my senses inform me that, while undernourished and ridden with vermin, it is quite healthy. I look into its eyes and silently order it to come to me, feeling vaguely disappointed when it continues to sit unmoving among the refuse. A glance around confirms that I am quite alone in this dark corner, so I leap forward and seize the animal. It does not react, which seems to indicate that I was able to affect it after all.

The swoon, thank heavens, is not nearly as pronounced as it is when drinking from a human, for that would be too indecent even for my rather liberal views on the subject. As I drink, I can hear the dog’s heartbeat, which enables me to judge precisely when it is time to stop. The blood seems to be much thinner and less appetising, but it is far from revolting. I shall have to see whether it will stay down.

I am barely finished and about to release the dog from my grip when something connects violently with the side of my head, sending both me and the animal flying.

Boxer’s reflexes coming to my aid, I roll with the punch and regain my feet to face my attacker. To my surprise, it is the very person I have been seeking, the same small, wiry man who so improbably overwhelmed me. I observe that he used to be a printer before he lost his day job.

Eyes glowing, he snarls at me, “Go away! This is my territory!”

“I came to talk to you,” I return, moving to keep my distance.

“You’re hunting in my territory, and I won’t have it! Go away, or I’ll kill you.” His stance, while certainly threatening, is not that of an experienced fighter. Then his eyes lock with mine. “Go away,” he repeats.

There is a feeling of pressure behind my temples, but beyond that, I feel no compulsion to comply with his words. “As soon as I have talked with you,” I state, cheerfully.

He growls, angered by his inability to bend me to his will. “Talk, then, but be quick.”

“Not here. There’s no telling who is listening behind those shuttered windows. I have a room nearby, or we could go to yours if you prefer.”

His expression makes it clear that he would much prefer to see the back of me. “Neutral ground,” he finally allows. “There’s a pub nearby with a back room we can use. Follow me.”

 


	4. In The Light Of Day

_Holmes_

 

As I walk alongside my unlikely companion, I deduce from his manner of speech, his familiarity with the area and the apparel he is wearing that he cannot be much older than he appears (for I rather doubt that a vampire is subject to the mortal process of ageing and, therefore, potentially immortal - yet another implication I have not grasped in its entirety). His speech proclaims rather humble, East London origins, but as he moves through the crowds, he exudes a sense of self-confidence that I am tempted to attribute to his vampiric state rather than his native personality, and I find that I am in agreement with this attitude. After all, what harm can these mortals do us?

However, of the hundreds of people who pass us on our way, I notice none other who is like us. This means that there aren’t many on average, which in turn means that vampires are not superior to mortals, for otherwise they would certainly have conquered and enslaved all mortals by now, or be at the very least more numerous. Clearly, there is a flaw in my assumption of superiority, stemming, no doubt, from incomplete data. Maybe there is some natural factor that limits uncontrolled growth of the vampire population, such as some even stronger enemy.

This leads to another line of thought I have carefully suppressed till now: if vampires exist, what else is there? How wrong have I been in my assumption that the mortal world is big enough for us?

My speculation is halted when we reach our destination. My fellow vampire waves me inside the public house, muttering, “We can enter freely here” before motioning me into the back room he mentioned, and I file his remark away for later examination. The landlord knows my companion by sight, nodding at him and greeting him with “Hello, Pete”. I can detect no suspicion in the landlord’s demeanour, which either means that he knows nothing of Pete’s condition, or that he has no objection to it.

We sit down at the single, small table in the back room, lit only by a single candle. I eye the flame warily, but now that I am expecting it, I can control the unreasoning fear the sight causes in me – obviously something that gets easier with practice.

“Peter Carpenter,” my companion introduces himself.

I nod. “Sherlock Holmes.”

Carpenter’s eyes open wide. “Sherlock H-“ he gasps.

Another one of Watson’s faithful readers, then. My dear friend will be pleased to know that he has an audience among the supernatural as well. “I take it you did not know me when you attacked me,” I state.

“I – no, I had no idea…. I just thought… it seemed…”

As it does not seem that his sentence is going to contain any meaning, I undertake to interrupt him. “I suggest you start at the beginning.”

Carpenter frowns with considerable confusion. “The beginning?”

“Who are you? How did you come to be like you are now? What did you want with the artefact – a phial containing a relic, is it not – and why did you choose to change me?”

“You don’t know, then?”

I grind my teeth in impatience. “I know nothing about you save the obvious facts that you used to be a printer, that you were born and have spent most of your life in the area, that you are not much older than your physical appearance, which I should put at around four-and-twenty, and that you at least occasionally read the Strand Magazine but pay little attention to Paget’s illustrations.”

He smiles in obvious delight. “This is just like being in one of your stories! You are, of course, correct on every count.”

“I am glad I managed to amuse you. Now, if you please.”

He leans back in his chair and composes himself. “There’s not much to tell. I’m an orphan with no living relatives and have led an unremarkable life as a printer, as you said. That changed five years ago, when I was attacked on my way to the pub – this very pub, in fact -, and left for dead in the street. When I came to, I was like this. It was horrible. The hunger, and the aversion to daylight and food, my God, looking at people and only seeing the blood in them – you have no idea what I went through. Or maybe you do. Anyhow, I tried to do the same thing you obviously did - seek out the one who made me to get answers. But I couldn’t even find out who it was. So, there I was, a vampire with no clue. All I knew was that I had changed, and everything was different, and that I had turned into something I could not understand with no way of finding out anything about it except from books. So I studied everything that has been written about my kind. The only fact that looked to be of any help was that there appear to be some religious connotations. That’s why I finally decided to steal that relic. There was a text in a book about the power some relics have to exorcise evil, that such objects are imbued with the strength of the Lord, and I hoped that I might somehow reverse my condition with the aid of one of them. I found out about that phial, drifted into the church in mist shape, grabbed the phial while the priest’s back was turned, and drifted out again. I tried everything I could think of, but, as you can see, I’m still the same. It didn’t work. Nothing works. There’s no hope.” There is a desperation in his voice that I cannot believe is false.

I admit to a sinking feeling at those words, for I had hoped he might be able to give me something to go on. “Are you saying that, after five years, you have not found even a hint to a solution to your problem? No other vampires to offer suggestions? Nothing?”

He smiles sadly. “No doubt you would have done better, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. No doubt you will do better within the next five days, never mind five years. After all, here you are, having found me the very night after I made you. But I’m not like you. I may have eyes now that can see in complete darkness, but I still didn’t know it was you even when I had my teeth in your neck. It’s all I can do to survive from one night to the next, without being found out by my neighbours or by the police. If there are others like us in London or even in England, I don’t know about them. Oh, I have found out a few things; how to turn into mist, or into a bat or a wolf, or that I cannot enter any private house without invitation, that crossing the river is difficult at times, that I cannot do anything without drinking blood at regular intervals, and that being awake during the day is next to impossible. And sunlight! Stay out of sunlight if you love yourself. But all that only helps me to survive as I am now, not to turn back into a normal human. I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no way. This is permanent. I’ll never see the sunlight again.”

 

* * *

 

_Watson_

 

“No matter how I questioned him, Watson, that was the extent of what he would tell me, and I believe him,” Holmes concluded his account, draped over the sofa listlessly, one arm slung over his head and the other dangling down with the hand brushing the carpet. “If there were a way to reverse the change, he would have used it. Ergo, we must accept the possibility that this state is permanent, or, if it is not, that the procedure is either obscure or will need to be invented first. I am not averse to experimenting upon myself, as you know, Watson, but this would involve establishing an entirely new system of medicine for a newly discovered species, not just injecting myself with the latest alkaloid.”

I listened, worried not only by his words, but even more by the air of hopelessness he was radiating. “You must not give up, Holmes,” I entreated him. “If there is a way, we’ll find it, together. I shall scour all the medical journals for the most obscure hints. We can go to the university towns and search the libraries. We can go abroad together to seek the roots of the matter on the continent. There is so much we can try that your printer surely didn’t think to do.”

His lips curled in a half-hearted approximation of a smile. “Good old Watson! Always ready to offer sound advice or a helping hand. I truly do not know what I should do without you.”

There was a pause during which he stared vacantly at the window, but I knew him well enough to tell that he was planning and thinking. Finally, he heaved himself into a more erect sitting position, and I was pleased to note that his listless attitude was changing for something more purposeful. “Very well. We’ll exhaust London for what wisdom it can offer on the subject, but I find I need fortification first. Not you, old boy,” he added when I was making a move towards undoing my collar. “Much as I appreciate the offer, I have found that animal blood will suffice. It’s half past three now. I’ll be back in half an hour, at most.”

With that, he rose, took up his hat and stick, and headed for the door. But then, he halted and turned back. His silvery grey eyes, so dear and familiar to me, darted here and there to survey the sitting-room as if seeing it for the first time and finally came to regard me for a long moment with an unfathomable expression. “Thank you, my dear friend,” he said, solemnly. “Do turn in; you look exhausted.”

I was left staring at the closed door.

It is said that, between congenial souls, unfathomable ties of rapport may develop that transcend words or even the subtler language of the body. I had seen too much of the world to doubt this, and it was certainly the only explanation I had at this moment, when all my instincts were suddenly screaming at me to not let Holmes out of my sight. Without taking the time to question my impression, I, too, dressed for the street and stepped out our front door, just in time to see Holmes enter a lonely cab.

At this hour between night and day, when it was too late for the revellers and too early for the working men, Baker Street was deserted, so I had no hope of finding a cab of my own. There was only one thing for it – run after the one Holmes had taken and hope that he would not spot me, and that he would reach his destination before I was out of strength.

I kept up a brisk trot until we crossed the Marylebone Road, where I happily saw another cab coming my way, and so I was soon able to continue my pursuit much more comfortably.

It soon appeared that Holmes was making his way towards Hampstead Heath. Of course, this would be a good place to lay his hands upon a rabbit or two, and I was beginning to feel a mighty fool for running after him like that on nothing more than a gut feeling. There was a moment when I actually considered turning back, but, despite all obvious rational explanation for this excursion of Holmes’, my instincts were still clamouring at me to keep going. If he were truly intending to hunt, I told myself, surely he would have made for Regent’s Park, which was much closer to our rooms than the Heath.

I barely managed to bring my cabbie to stop in time to watch my friend alight from his cab and move off in the direction of one of the larger lakes upon the Heath, but when I had finally paid my cabby and was ready to follow, Holmes was nowhere to be seen.

That was the moment when I noticed that the sky was lightening perceptibly. My unnamed dread began to take shape sufficiently for me to quicken my pace to a trot as I circled the Heath, looking for the tall, lithe figure of my friend.

It is not a large area, are mere few square miles, but it is uneven, riddled with lakes and trees and thus difficult to survey. I ran full out, from one clump of trees and shrubbery to the next, ever conscious of the approaching sunrise, calling my friend’s name with increasing desperation. It was now so bright that I could see clearly, which was both a blessing and a curse. Finally, I spotted him a several hundred yards away, sitting calmly in what looked like a cross-legged position upon the highest point of Parliament Hill, facing towards the east, where the sky was in full bloom with pinks and reds. It was going to be a glorious, cloudless day. I ran uphill, on my last wind.

He looked my way as I approached. “You’re too late, Watson,” he called, very calmly.

“Holmes, no!” I came to a stop next to him, panting from my exertions. “Have you taken leave of your senses, man?”

He looked up at me, raising a quieting hand in one of his masterful gestures. “My mind is quite made up, old friend.”

“To kill yourself?”

“There is no other way.”

“How can you say that?” I was beside myself with fear and worry, and, I am afraid, no little anger. The sky was now so bright that it could only be seconds till sunrise. “I thought we had decided to do this together!”

“There are too many variables,” he said, in that same, almost unnaturally calm tone of voice. “I have no idea what will happen further down the road. I may attack you, kill you, even make you like I am, once the impulses become too strong. There probably is no cure, and even if there is, it will be years until I find it. The risk to you is simply too great, so I have resolved to remove the cause.”

Above our heads, the tops of the scattered trees were already bathed in sunlight. There was no time to discuss this. Fear for my friend’s life gave me an impetus I never should have mustered under normal circumstances.

I reached down and grabbed him by his overcoat. “You are coming with me this instant, Sherlock Holmes, or I give you my word of honour that I will lift you and carry you away from here!”

But he slapped my hands away with incredible speed and strength. His eyes flashed; his lips drew back, and he bared his fangs at me, snarling. “Do not touch me!”

I recoiled. For an instant, I did not know Holmes from the ferocious, almost beastly thing that looked ready to pounce upon me, but then he fell back, closing his eyes and groaning softly, and he was back to being my dear, changed friend. “I beg you, Watson,” he said softly, “leave now. I do not want you to see me when it happens.”

“Not an option!” I shouted, taking off my overcoat and throwing it over him, whether to protect him from the sun or to protect myself from his fangs, I do not know. The sun was up now, both of us throwing long shadows along the hill. I threw my arms around him, coat and all, and dragged him to his feet.

Looking around frantically, I saw that the nearest shelter was a small wooden hut, used as a resting place for visitors to the Heath, halfway down the hill. Holmes offered no resistance and limply slumped back onto the ground, and I remembered the strange paralysis that had come over him at sunrise the morning before, so I made to hook my arms under his legs and lift him up. Abruptly, he shrieked and thrashed; there was the smell of burnt flesh so familiar to me from the battlefield, and I could not hold him for his struggling. The sun was burning every inch of his white skin that was exposed; the pain must be excruciating, overcoming even that supernatural daytime torpor, at least for the moment.

He made it to his feet by what looked like sheer accident, holding my coat closed before his face with hands that were rapidly reddening and blackening, and he stumbled away from the sunlight, towards the western slope of the hill. I put one of my arms around his shoulders and steered him towards the hut, his muffled cries in my ears, and terribly conscious of the fact that his movements were slowing and growing clumsy.

“Keep going!” I shouted. “There’s shelter a hundred yards from here.”

“I can’t!” he wailed, but he kept putting one foot in front of the other, jerkily, his steps a precarious balance of stumbling and barely catching himself from falling, worlds removed from his normal economic sprinter’s pace.

“You must! Use your mind, Holmes! You’ve made it this far. The sun is up, and you are still moving! Keep it up!” Thus encouraging him as best I could, I dragged and steered him downhill.

Maybe twenty yards still separated us from the hut when he fell and lay unmoving for a moment, his hands completely blackened now, the fingers reduced to thin, scorched claws that looked as though they would break off if any weight were put upon them. The coat had fallen away from his face, and before I hastily replaced it, I saw that the skin on his cheeks and neck was badly blistered from even this short exposure.

Those twenty yards to shelter, at that time, might as well have been twenty miles. But some instinct for survival seemed to have taken hold of Holmes now, for he managed to regain his feet, by what superhuman effort I know not, and stumbled, with my aid, the remaining distance, and finally, blessed cool shadow surrounded both of us.

We collapsed inside the hut, and I had barely removed the coat from Holmes’ head in order to assess the damage, when his burnt hands grabbed me and pulled me towards him, desperate strength guiding my head towards his, angling and exposing my throat.

I might have fought him off, weakened and injured as he was, but I yielded to the desperation I could hear in the one groan he that escaped him before his fangs penetrated my skin, and then it was too late. There was again that intense pleasure I remembered so well from last time. I gladly and willingly abandoned myself to it until the walls of the hut surrounding us seemed to waver and recede, and finally faded away.

 

 


	5. The Power Of The Mind

I do not know how long I was unconscious, but, in hindsight, it cannot have been more than a few minutes. When I came back to myself, I was lying upon the floor, my collar was undone, and someone had placed my overcoat underneath my head. Turning my head slightly, I spotted a large figure moving about the dim interior of the small wooden hut. While I watched, there was the sharp crack of breaking wood, as loud as a pistol shot in that small space. Then the man moved back to where I was lying, and I recognized the broad-shouldered form of Shinwell Johnson.

Memory returned, and I understood why I was feeling so unutterably weak and weary: I was suffering from the consequences of massive blood loss. Holmes had attacked me – Holmes! Was he all right? I remembered that he had been badly burned. Turning my head to the other side, I was relieved to find the lithe figure of my friend lying supine next to me. His face was smooth; there was no trace of the terrible blackening and blisters I had seen developing before my very eyes.

But I had no time to wonder about that, for at that moment Shinwell Johnson, kneeling next to the motionless figure of Sherlock Holmes, raised his arm over his head. With a thrill, I saw that he was grasping my trusty back-up walking stick weighted with lead, while his other hand was holding the sharp end of a splintered log in position over Holmes’ left breast. The big man’s face was streaked with tears and contorted in an expression of profound grief.

I reacted instinctively. Rearing up, I threw myself towards Holmes and knocked the stake out of Johnson’s hand just as the weighted end of the stick came down, connecting sharply with the big man’s hand. He cried out in pain and surprise and stared at me with horror, and I twisted my stick out of his other hand before he could react.

“What the hell do you think you –“ But the words died upon my lips when Johnson recoiled from me, stumbling and falling onto his backside with his back against the wall of the hut, his hands raised as if to ward me off, a look of dismay etched deeply into his features.

“Oh Lord,” he gasped, “not you, too, Doctor.”

“What are you blathering about?” Holding myself up on one elbow, I cast a quick glance at Holmes’ chest and saw with relief that he was uninjured.

Johnson stared at me for a minute longer, but finally gathered himself. “When I came in…” he stammered, “and saw him – and you, lying there so still with blood on your neck, I was convinced that he had… oh God, I’ll never forget the sight…”

It was strange to see a hardened Whitechapel man so discombobulated, but I was myself too shaken by what had almost happened to be gentle with him. “Pull yourself together, man!” I barked at him. “I’m all right, I was merely out cold. Now draw a deep breath – that’s good! another one – fine. Take a sip from my hip-flask, here. Good. Now tell me, calmly and clearly, what happened.”

Still keeping his distance from me, Johnson cast another suspicious glance in my direction before looking searchingly at Holmes, who had lain still throughout, obviously subject now to that peculiar daytime torpor I had witnessed the day before. “Well,” he finally allowed, “you do look more human than him. You’re breathin’, for one thing. And you’re awake. I’m sorry, Doctor.”

“Never mind that now, Johnson. What happened? What made you do such a thing to Holmes?”

The big man took another deep breath. “Well, when you sent me to get books on, you know, vampires last night, and then I saw Mr. Holmes’ hand burn like that, it got me thinking. My grandma had a lot to say about vampires and pixies and things, back when I was a nipper, and none of them were very nice. Vampires especially, what with drinking people’s blood and turning them into other vampires. So I said to myself, if Mr. Holmes is a vampire, and he’s sharing rooms with you, Doctor, then maybe I should keep an eye on you, in case he got any funny ideas about turning you. So I head over to Baker Street first thing, and what do I see but Mr. Holmes getting into a cab, and you loping after him not two seconds later. So I say to myself, wherever you’re going, that’s where I need to be. Took me a while to follow you here, what with being on foot and you in cabs, and when I came in, Mr. Holmes had just finished laying you down. I could see he had taken your blood. He didn’t see me, but I saw him plenty clearly, how the black skin flaked off his hands and his face was crackling and the skin falling off it, and then he looked like new, and fell back and went to sleep there and then. I’ll never forget the sight if I live to be a hundred. When he was not moving anymore, I checked him over, and sure enough, he’s dead. He’s a vampire all right. You, too, looked like dead. I thought you’d rise to be like him. And I remembered from my granny’s stories what I must do. And then you suddenly come up like a jack-in-the-box with a grudge. Put the fear of God in me, you did.”

“You would have killed him if I hadn’t intervened,” I stated, very calmly.

Johnson eyed me warily. “Easy, Doctor! I was only trying to do what’s right. He’s a vampire, for goodness sake. He’s not our friend anymore.”

For some reason, his putting it this way ruffled my feathers immensely. “He sure as dammit still is _my_ friend, Johnson! If you try to harm him again, by the Lord Harry, I swear I shall forget my Hippocratic Oath long enough to break every bone in your body.”

True to what I had learned so far about Shinwell Johnson, he was not impressed by my fury. He cast me another glance, this one more appraising than wary, and smiled tightly. “I’d love to see you try, Doctor. Your loyalty does you credit, but I fear that it’s misplaced. You were unconscious when I found you. He’s drunk your blood, hasn’t he? He almost killed you! What kind of friend does that? You can’t trust him any longer, and he doesn’t deserve your friendship!”

I shook my head. “He was injured, and he did not kill me, even though he could have. That’s all I need to know.”

He rose to his feet and advanced once more, cautiously. “Move aside, Doctor, and let me finish it.”

I, too, struggled to my feet, relieved to find that, in spite of some expected light-headedness, the floor beneath me remained firm. “Oh, stop that nonsense already, Johnson! He came here to die because he wanted to protect me from him! Is that the action of an evil being? He only attacked me because while I saved him, against his wish I might add, he was badly burned from the sun. So he did what he must to survive. It was my own bloody fault, and my decision, and if you don’t stand down this instant, I swear I’ll use my stick on you.”

There was a pause. Johnson stared at me, at Holmes, and back at me. Finally, he grunted in what I took to be acquiescence. “I’m glad. I don’t want to do it, and that’s the truth.”

I remembered the grief I had seen in his expression when he thought himself unobserved, so I wordlessly clapped his shoulder, earning myself a brisk nod. If this burly Whitechapel man was any example, I mused, for a man who did not like to socialise, Holmes certainly had a surprising knack for making friends in unlikely places.

“Blimey, Doctor, I still can’t believe it,” Johnson finally said. “A vampire. It boggles the mind.”

I only nodded, for I was ahead of him in the process of acceptance, if only by a few steps. And truth be told, I was still waiting for the reaction to set in. But meanwhile, we had work to do. “We cannot stay here. Will you help me bring him back to Baker Street?”

 

* * *

 

Thankfully, Holmes was in no condition to complain about the indignities involved in transporting him back to our rooms. I simply was glad that it was still too early to draw any undue attention to the two unlikely furniture transport men carrying a rolled-up carpet through the streets, just as I was, for the first time, glad of the fact that Holmes did not need to breathe. Finally, we were able to unroll the carpet in the sitting-room, having first drawn the blinds – for the sun was well above the horizon by now – and moved aside the armchairs to give us room. And then, Holmes lay exposed on the floor, motionless, looking unharmed, and quite dead.

Shinwell Johnson pointedly looked anywhere but at my supine friend, shuffled his feet and finally announced his intention to leave. “I’ll drop in again later if that’s all right, Doctor. You’re lookin’ awfully pale. Can I fetch you anything? More books? A cross? Garlic?”

I smiled, recognizing the unvoiced apology in his awkward manner and disjointed expressions of concern and offer to help. “I don’t think any of that will do any good, Johnson, but thank you all the same.”

He nodded. “Still, well, take care.”

I knew he meant me to take care of myself, but I chose to take his meaning differently. “I shall.” Holmes certainly needed my care, if only to protect him from himself.

Alone once more, I hoisted my friend’s lifeless body up in my arms and carried him into his bedroom, where I stood, uncertain where to lay him down. His window faced to the north, which meant that there would be no direct sunlight to worry about, but maybe mere daylight would be sufficient to harm him? On the other hand, I found I felt a deep aversion to stuffing my helpless friend into a trunk, or even to shoving him underneath his bed like so much unwanted garbage. Finally, I simply placed him upon his bed, and there he lay, senseless and powerless to protect himself, looking so terribly vulnerable that I could not bear it. In the end, I covered him completely with his duvets, knowing that he would receive neither comfort nor warmth from them, trying to ignore the unavoidable association of covering up a corpse in the morgue.

All unwanted thoughts aside, I confess that I found that this activity, on top of my recent loss of blood, tired me out considerably, so I closed the door and flung myself down weakly upon the sofa in the sitting-room, where I sat motionless for a goodly while, until finally I buried my face in my hands.

How on earth could this possibly continue? Amidst my burning need to find a solution and make this damnable situation work, I found myself wondering precisely how I proposed to accomplish this. Holmes seemed to have decided that the only way to deal with the problem lay in eliminating himself, and until he changed his mind, I should have no help from his side.

But what, oh what should I do? How could I possibly keep Holmes’ condition from becoming known? What should I tell Mrs. Hudson, who, with the quick empathy that women have, would surely soon notice that something was amiss? What should I say when a new client arrived while Holmes lay dead upon his bed? How should I prevent Holmes from carrying out his unfortunate resolution after all, as soon as I finally fell asleep during the night?

My primary task clearly lay in convincing him that his continued existence was of a value which outweighed the risk – for I, too, recognized that there certainly was a risk involved. But I was a man of letters. I should be able to find the right words when the time came, or so I fervently hoped.

 

* * *

 

Considering the enormity of the fact that I was harbouring a vampire in the next room, most of the day passed surprisingly uneventfully. Around noon, Mrs. Hudson enquired as to when Mr. Holmes might be pleased to have lunch and withdrew again with no great reaction when I informed her that he would not eat at all today. A little after the luncheon that I took alone, a young lady called to ask for the great detective’s services, and I was obliged to send her away, having informed her that Sherlock Holmes was currently away from London on another case, and that I did not know when he would return.

Early in the afternoon, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, from which I was awoken only hours later by the arrival of Shinwell Johnson, who, true to his word, had taken it upon himself to check upon me.

“You’re still looking awful, Doctor, if you don’t mind me saying so,” he said with an anxious glance at the door to Holmes’ bedroom. “You really shouldn’t let him, you know…“ He broke off uncertainly, as if trying to avoid saying the words “drink” or “blood”.

I confess I felt that I could not contradict him, which meant that I had another problem. Holmes would likely need more sustenance as soon as he awoke, which would be within the next hour or so. And despite my wish for the contrary, it appeared that I no longer was in any position to oblige. “Johnson,” I said, “would you mind terribly just going down to the butcher’s and asking for a few pints of blood?”

Johnson gave me a look.

“Pig’s or cow’s, man.”

The big man’s mouth twitched. “I did gather as much,” he said with dignity. “But do you really think it will do any good if it’s not, well…?”

“Holmes seemed to think animal blood was sufficient yesterday.” I had to hope this had not just been part of his deception, for otherwise we should be in deep trouble.

Johnson nodded doubtfully but offered no protest. “Anything else while I’m out?”

I sighed deeply. “Not at the moment.” Handing him some coins, I waved him out.

But I was not alone for long, for it only took Johnson some ten minutes to return from his errand. “Fine thing to be carrying through the streets at this hour, Doctor,” he muttered, putting a large brown glass bottle onto the table and peering at Holmes’ closed door. “Not awake yet, is he? The sun’s just going down.”

As if to prove him wrong, there was a noise behind the door at that moment, and next thing we knew, Holmes was standing in the open doorway, dressed in shirt and waistcoat with his grey dressing gown on top, looking pale and controlled. His light grey eyes passed quickly over both of us, then flicked to the bottle upon the table, and I swear I saw his nostrils flare.

I do not know what I expected him to do – seize the bottle and drink from it in an uncontrolled frenzy, maybe. Instead, he deliberately turned his back on it and flopped down in his chair as if this were any other day, and as if nothing had happened to throw our lives into chaos. “Sit down, Johnson,” he invited the Whitechapel man, nodding at the chair in which we normally placed our visitors.

Johnson looked at me with a mixture of entreaty and alarm, but complied readily enough.

“I see you have become quite involved with recent developments, Johnson,” Holmes stated, steepling his fingers and half closing his eyes in the familiar languid attitude. “Also, it appears I owe it partly to you that I am still among the – still here.” He smiled bitterly at his near slip. “Even though I am not certain that this is in fact a good thing, I wish to thank you.”

Johnson nodded haltingly. I could not help but notice that he, too, was quite pale, and I realized that he was badly frightened of my friend. “What are you going to do, Mr. Holmes?” he finally forced out.

“Do?” Holmes echoed, eyes still half closed and apparently addressing the ceiling. “Why, nothing, at least for now. I think I may take it as given that Watson here will do his utmost to prevent any reoccurrence of my little scheme of yesterday, in whatever variation I may devise.”

“Damn right I shall,” I muttered.

“I was a fool to think otherwise, dear fellow,” Holmes continued, “and I owe you many thanks for your prompt and energetic action on my behalf.”

Johnson had sunk down in his chair until he looked only about half as big as he really was. “But what does this have to do with me?” he asked hesitantly. “Why am I here?”

Just at this moment, what little sunlight there had still been outside had faded completely. If I could see it, then obviously Holmes could feel it. I could see the change coming over him with the setting of the sun. He seemed to grow more substantial in some way. It almost seemed as if, as the night was closing in, his supernatural powers returned to him, making him at once formidable and irresistibly beautiful.

He lowered his head and opened his light silver grey eyes fully, catching Johnson’s gaze easily. “Look at me, Johnson,” he said, his voice deep and commanding.

Then the strangest thing happened. My ears started ringing, and there was a deep pounding in my head, even though I was not the one addressed. Johnson, caught in the centre of the effect, complied helplessly.

“Early this morning, you assisted me in an observation in Regent’s Park,” Holmes said slowly and clearly. “You do not remember the details, because you had been carousing with your pal Jefferson the night before and are a little hazy as to what happened. But you noticed nothing out of the ordinary about me, and when the affair was completed, you went home to get some sleep. When you awoke, you received a verbal summons to meet me here in Baker Street. Do you understand?”

Johnson nodded as if in a dream.

Holmes briefly closed his eyes. I felt as if a vice around my head were abruptly released, and Johnson actually slumped.

“As I was saying, Johnson,” Holmes went on casually, “thank you for your assistance. I regret having had to summon you here for the purpose, but Watson and I are on our way to Hastings and could not spare the time to come round. Our train leaves in, what, thirty-four minutes. Anyhow, here is your pay.” He handed Johnson a sovereign, which the Whitechapel man took readily enough.

“I only regret I could not be any more effective,” Johnson said amiably, all traces of the fear he had displayed only seconds ago gone completely. “Boy, that Jefferson sure knows how to quaff. Thank you, Mr. Holmes.” He rose, grinning easily and pocketing his sovereign. “Well, I shan’t be holding you. Glad to be of help.”

And so he sauntered out of the room, leaving a profound silence behind.

Finally, Holmes rose and crossed over to the table and the brown glass bottle. Raising it to his eyes, he studied it for a moment, then removed the stopper and smelled the contents. “Pig’s blood,” he said softly. “Good thinking, Watson.” With a wry smile, he turned his back on me, set the bottle to his lips and emptied it in a single draught.

I slowly felt the blood return to my face, but I still had to shake myself vigorously to find myself again. Meanwhile, Holmes carefully dabbed at his lips with his handkerchief before turning round to face me.

“Well, Watson,” my friend said solemnly, “you have seen how dangerous I am. Nothing is safe when I am around, not even your memory. Under these circumstances, do you not agree that my cause of action yesterday was correct?”

“Let’s not start that again, Holmes,” I returned forcefully. “My opinion has not altered, even though I admit that I am a little shaken. I still trust you. Besides, if anyone can be trusted with the sort of power you now undoubtedly possess, it is you.”

He looked at me silently, unmoving, not breathing. Then he smiled. “Perhaps. As long as I have you by my side to remind me what a good man is, Watson.”

I held his gaze and returned his smile. “And so you shall.”

“Yes, well,” he sighed, breaking the moment and returning to his chair. “I have to say, Watson, this variety of blood is about as appetising as raw fish. If I am to continue, I shall definitely have to do something about that.”

He eyed his chemical equipment as he said that, and I allowed myself a relieved smile. It seemed that the question of his premature exit from this grand stage was no longer on the table. Everything else, I dearly hoped, would follow.


	6. Adaptation

"Holmes," I said, interrupting our companionable silence the next evening, "I wish to thank you for your trust." It had taken me a while to gather my courage and put my thoughts into words, and I winced at how loud my voice sounded in our snug room.

He looked at me from where he was lounging upon our sofa, all long limbs and elegant curves stilled in repose, raising a quizzical eyebrow at me.

I hesitated. There was no way I could say what I intended to say without insulting him, however obliquely, but I needed to tell him my thoughts. Finally, I drew a deep breath to get it all out in one go. "I can still remember that you're a- that is to say, I remember the sequence of events, so I deduce that you haven't altered my memory, which you could very easily have done. So, thank you." I did not mention the journal that lay upon my writing desk, its pages still white, nor how long I had stared at the first page the night before while he was out, dithering between trusting him and writing it all down, in case I should one day no longer remember.

His pale lips had twisted into a wry grin at my slip, then his expression grew more serious as I reached the end of my speech. "I do not fully deserve your thanks, I fear, my dear Watson," he said softly. "I must confess that the thought has crossed my mind."

I started, and a sinking feeling seemed to pull my guts out of me. My trust in my friend had always been a constant in my life, and I could not bear to have that shaken, now less than ever. Besides, I had no doubt that, if he ever changed his mind, I should not even remember the attack. Swallowing hard, I asserted, "But you did not do it."

"No. I did not, nor am I planning to do so, believe me. But we should nevertheless discuss this, my dear Watson." He shifted into an upright position, his upper body straightening from the waist and his legs swinging down in an effortless movement that somehow conveyed the impression that he weighed nothing.

I moved to mirror his position much less elegantly, leaning forward and meeting his gaze.

"The thing is, Watson, that I may be putting you at risk by allowing you to retain your memory," he began.

I had not expected that. "At risk?" I echoed. "How? From whom?"

"That, precisely, is the question."

I managed a complex gesture that indicated both my incomprehension and desire for him to elaborate.

He looked at me earnestly. "In a way, I have become part of another world, a world where beings such as myself exist. For lack of evidence to the contrary, I have to assume that, if vampires exist, then so may any other creature of legend, which, as you can imagine, would make for a pretty crowded microcosm populating the world alongside mortals, with them being none the wiser no less."

He paused, giving me the opportunity to imagine vampires jostling elbows with werewolves, fairies, trolls, pixies, Baba Yaga and the Loch Ness Monster while mere mortals like myself wandered among them without seeing them, and I did not know whether to be worried or amused.

"Going on that assumption," he continued, "there must be some sort of legislation in place that guides the behaviour of these, let us call them supernatural beings. Otherwise there would surely be utter chaos, which would lead to mortals most certainly becoming aware of them. Us. Since they are not, and since contact between us and them - you - seems inevitable on the face of it, it follows that there must be some sort of required behaviour, possibly even a whole legislation geared towards leaving mortals unaware, and, continuing this thought, some sort police that enforces this legislation. Therefore, if I leave you in the know, who is to say that something else will not step in and remove your knowledge about us, possibly by some means more drastic than altering your memory?"

I shivered, firmly on the side of worry by now. As always, his reasoning was clear and inescapable. But, with typical gallantry, he had only mentioned the danger to me. If his supposition were true, would he as the cause for my knowledge not be subject to retribution as well? "What do we do?" I whispered. "I have no wish to put you in danger with my knowledge. Maybe you should alter my memory after all." The words felt is if I had to push each one out individually, for everything within me was alarmed at the mere prospect. I did not wish blissful ignorance. I wanted to be an informed ally who knew what he was going in for. I wanted to be able to help.

"No." He leaned forward, resting his hands loosely upon his knees, but I knew with the empathy that had existed between us from the beginning that his relaxation was enforced by his will. "You have always been invaluable to me as a reminder of all that is good and decent about humanity. If you were clueless about me, if I did not have your wordless remonstrance keeping me upon the straight and narrow path, what would remain to prevent me from sliding down the scale towards becoming a mindless leech, erasing your memory again and again whenever the need arose, until I finally end up killing the one important person in my life? I need you to keep me human, therefore you need to be aware of the situation and of the danger-signs. And anything trying to get at you will have to go through me first."

I smiled, warmed by his words. But in some recess of my mind, an idea was beginning to form - terrifying and outlandish at first, but looking more and more attractive the longer I considered it. I kept the thought to myself, resolving to voice it once the opportunity - or necessity, as the case might be - arose.

 

* * *

 

The following three weeks, as I look back at them now, constituted a transition of sorts. To all intents and purposes, Sherlock Holmes had accepted his new condition and was now applying his formidable intelligence and willpower to carving out a new life for himself, or, as he was fond of calling it, an un-life.

On the very same evening I have described, he went out and acquired a casket for his day's rest. ("Yes, it is rather fraught with cliché, but, besides being safer and more comfortable than resting on or underneath my bed, I fancy it also will also make for a pretty effective conversation piece.") He then spent the rest of the night at his chemical equipment, distilling and refining, combining and isolating, and subjecting samples of animal blood to the results of his labour before tasting them. The following nights, he was away for hours on end, often returning with a vaguely triumphant air and a spring to his step. And all through these activities, the set expression about his jaw and his reluctance to share his results told me that he was working towards some goal that he was finding difficult to attain, one which required all his powers and persistence.

For myself, I had finally relaxed my vigilance, secure in the knowledge that Holmes was definitely safe from himself. However, I kept observing him and his actions as I had always done, carefully and with no little fascination, curious to see what my friend the vampire would do next. There was a new level of solicitousness to my attention, of course. After all, he was relying upon me to notice signs of change in his character.

"My primary task," he told me on the third night after our talk, "must now be to battle the daylight. If I am to continue my work, I can't afford to be limited to the hours of darkness."

I was alarmed. The memory of his blackened and blistered flesh was still vivid in my mind, and I could not imagine how he proposed to overcome something so destructive by sheer force of will.

He smiled, having noticed my expression. "Adaptation is the key, Watson. Whatever does not kill me outright I can grow used to. My considerate maker, whom I consulted upon the matter, is of the opinion that I could not possibly have survived my recent exposure to the sunlight, your timely assistance notwithstanding. He also assures me that he has not even managed to stay awake past the first signs of dawn, while I have already expanded my range of operation to more than one hour into the day at morning. Nor has coming awake before sunset proved impossible. That much clearly is a question of determination. As for the effect of the sunlight itself, I have healed from that and will do so again. My hope is that I may be able to speed up the process with repeated exposure."

I was not happy with the prospect of Holmes deliberately subjecting himself to an ordeal of this magnitude; however I knew my friend well enough by then to realise that his mind was made up, and no words of mine would change it. "What can I do?" I asked. "I do hope you will not undertake anything so dangerous without me to back you up."

"My dear fellow, I wouldn't dream of it. Besides, it should be possible to build up a tolerance to sunlight without leaving this room. These windows face south. The sun will begin to strike this wall by seven thirty-three tomorrow morning. That's some three hours past dawn. I propose to be here when it happens."

I nodded. "Well. I'll go stock up on liquid proteins, then." And have a plentiful helping of supper, I added to myself silently.

 

* * *

 

The sitting-room was already bright with daylight when I entered it the next morning, having woken to the strains of Holmes' violin filtering through the walls. He put down the instrument to greet me, his expression set with determination. "Ten more minutes," he stated calmly, but I could tell by the compression of his lips and the very immobility of his features that his quietude was forced.

The door to his bedroom was open, affording me a view at the open casket and the line-up of dark bottles next to it.

"As you can see, everything is prepared," Holmes answered my thoughts, as had been his wont even before the change. "If all goes according to plan, I will tolerate the sunlight for as long as I can, and then withdraw into the darkness of the casket to heal."

"And in case you are, once again, belittling the danger to yourself and should prove unable to move, I shall be here," I added pointedly.

He ignored the barb, squinting at the window and then at the clock. I noticed that his eyes were reddened, and he was blinking rapidly. Before I could comment, however, he pulled his hip-flask from a pocket of his dressing-gown and took a swig from it, frowning and blinking. Closing the flask, he screwed his eyes shut for a moment, and when he opened them again, the redness was gone.

"Holmes?"

He waved a hand to indicate that he was fine. "I suspect that you might have to guide me to my room," he conceded after a minute. "It's getting deucedly bright in here, and my sight keeps going. It's possible that full sunlight will blind me for a while."

I was aghast. "Holmes, I seriously think that this is not a good idea," I forced out. "You might be killed."

He smiled tightly. "I am dead already, Watson. I am no longer human. Temporary blindness means nothing to me. Severe injury that would cripple a mortal for months means nothing to me." He crossed over to his desk and opened a drawer. "Allow me to demonstrate." Before I could stop him, before I could even move, he had pushed up the sleeves of both his shirt and dressing gown, exposing his sinewy white forearm, and proceeded to drive his metal letter-opener clean through it.

There was hardly any blood. While the rest of me was frozen with shock, my medical mind instantly and automatically catalogued the damage. The blade had passed through between radius and ulna. Flexor carpi radialis, palmaris longus, and extensor and flexor digitorum profundus slashed, possibly severed, ulnar and interosseous arteries, veins, and nerves damaged or severed, interosseous membrane punctured. He might lose the use of his left hand. His violin hand.

With a grunt, he pulled the metal out and held his arm out for me to see. The bleeding stopped immediately, leaving a deep, ragged cut. He raised the limb to his mouth and licked off what little blood there was, and then he again presented his arm to me.

The wound was gone.

While I was still trying to grasp all this, Holmes put his mouth to the exit wound on the anterior part of his forearm, where the letter-opener had emerged, and seconds later, that wound, too, had disappeared without even leaving a scar. He flexed his fingers to demonstrate that the damage had healed with no lasting effect.

"Now do you understand, Watson?"

I nodded, struck dumb with horror.

He relaxed his stern expression. "Sorry to subject you to so drastic a demonstration before breakfast, old fellow, but I think it is vital that you know where my vulnerabilities truly lie. If this experiment does put me out of commission - and I won't deny that there is a chance of that happening - then I shall need you to be effective, and not waste your efforts on trivialities such as a broken bone."

I nodded again. "Point taken, Holmes," I affirmed, proud of how steady my voice sounded. "So, what would you term non-trivial damage, then?"

"Fire," he answered without hesitation, his voice very controlled. "Sunlight. Burn wounds take deucedly long to heal, and they hurt like the blazes. Also, if I had used wood to pierce my arm, the result would have been much more spectacular. I am aware that this does not make sense, but I have established it empirically - all of it, actually."

I shivered at this cool statement, imagining him subjecting himself to whatever experiments he had devised to be able to make these pronouncements, and I admitted that it was quite in character for him. After all, had he not tested the effect of various poisons upon himself again and again? To his scientific mind, this situation probably was no different. "Sunlight?" I echoed. "But -"

"Ah," he interrupted, "it is time."

A yellow band of sunlight had appeared upon the wall where the sun was slowly beginning to light up Baker Street. It was a lovely morning, one that would have gladdened my heart under normal circumstances. Now, I was tense with the same anticipation that had been my companion before battle - the prospect of good men being hurt and dependent upon my skill and resourcefulness. It did not matter that Holmes had done his best to prove to me that he was less vulnerable than those soldiers had been.

My friend had moved next to the slanting beam of sunlight, face set with determination, eyes squinted closed to mere slits, and slowly reached out until the light struck his naked forearm.

Immediately, a wisp of smoke rose up from the exposed skin, which instantly reddened and erupted into huge blisters. Abruptly, Holmes buried his mouth and nose in the crook of his elbow, muffling a piercing scream, his other arm held rock steady in the sun, the skin now blackening and smoking, while I felt as if my heart was about to come thundering out of my ears. The smell was nauseating.

"Holmes!" I cried. "Enough!"

He drew breath for another scream, this one sounding positively inhuman even muffled as it was, but he did not move. I had time for a confused thought about Mrs Hudson hearing those shrieks and coming to investigate any minute now, and then, finally, Holmes yanked his arm out of the sun and stumbled to the couch, falling half across it with the burned limb cradled against his chest and his face covered by his other arm.

I was next to him instantly, but all thought of applying my medical knowledge evaporated from my horrified mind as I saw the damage from up close. This was beyond third degree burns. This was bone-deep tissue damage. There was nothing I could do except amputate.

Holmes' screams had died down to a series of near animal whimpers; his face still buried in the crook of his arm. As I tried to push it away and expose his face - whether to treat him for shock or whether to remonstrate with him on the foolhardiness of this whole idea I knew not -, I realised that he was not in fact muffling his screams, but that instead his fangs were buried in the soft flesh of his elbow and he was frenziedly drinking his own blood. His reddened eyes met mine, and never before had I seen such an expression of desperate entreaty in them.

The sight, shamefully belatedly, reminded me of what it was I should be doing. I rushed for the closest brown glass bottle, angry at my inability to stop thinking of Holmes as a mortal patient. He did not need to be treated for shock, nor have his legs elevated or his brow cooled; there was but one remedy for what ailed him: he needed blood.

He snatched the bottle from me as soon as I was within reach, draining it eagerly, messily, so far removed from his customary suave elegance that I found myself keeping away from him. But he did not pay me any heed. Dropping the empty bottle to the floor, he fixed all his attention upon his burned arm, staring at it for a while and finally brushing his other hand over the burned flesh.

The black, burned tissue flaked away like so much dried glue, revealing shiny pink skin underneath.

Holmes relaxed his tense posture, and I flopped down onto the nearest chair, as close to fainting as I had come in quite a long time.

"Well, well, well," my friend stated coolly, glancing at the clock, "that was almost five minutes faster than the last time, and I did not lose consciousness. I should say that things are definitely improving."

"If you call that improved," I interjected weakly, "I shudder to think what your previous injuries looked like."

He held up his arm, which was now fully healed. "Let us just say that I was not certain then that I would keep this, old fellow. But never mind that now. The next logical step is a short term full-body exposure while the sun is still low enough not to kill me."

I buried my face in my hands, groaning. "Holmes, I'm not certain I'll survive this. At least let me have some breakfast first."

 

* * *

 

And so it went. I came close to regretting my decision to be close to him when he subjected himself to the sun, but of course there was no way I would allow him to do this on his own. With the passing days, the exposure times became longer even as the damage lessened and was regenerated faster, and finally, Holmes could tolerate full sunlight for an hour before the damage became visible. And since he had, at the same time, applied his formidable willpower to conquering that unnatural death-like day sleep that would otherwise have overcome him every day by noon at the latest, it appeared, after three weeks, that he could indeed continue his work.

With the threat of sunlight out of the way, and while I no longer needed to worry about his health in the sense that he could not contract any illnesses, I was concerned to find that, along with his chivalrous nature and all the other characteristics that I had come to admire in my friend, his carelessness about his own person had also made the transition from life to undeath. Food had never been high on his list of priorities; with his changed condition, however, it was obvious that he could no longer deny this need with impunity. While he was distracted by his self-imposed tasks, he would put off feeding for as long as he could, which would often result in the hunger interfering with his ability to concentrate and even straining his self-control.

One such occasion may serve as an example. It was already well into the forenoon, and Holmes had been working diligently at his chemical table, heedless of the time of day and the sunlight filling our room. Having observed his movements at the chemical bench becoming more and more abrupt and his utterings to himself more and more assuming the character of snarls, I finally dared to voice my concern by remarking that the blood on the table was liable to go stale if he did not consume it soon (not my most subtle remark, to be sure). He looked up from his work with eyes blazing - literally - and speared me with such a glare that I felt my heart skip a beat - again, literally. His lips moved back from his fangs, which I noticed even from across the room were considerably longer and sharper than the last time he had opened his mouth to speak, and he stared at me unblinkingly for what appeared to be several minutes.

I could not move, could not speak. I could only look at him helplessly. And yet, I felt no fear - quite the opposite. He was hungry. I could satisfy him; I wanted to satisfy him. Oh yes, at that moment, there was nothing I wanted more. Twice before had he fed from me; the memory of the pleasure of it suddenly was like a living thing. In anticipation, I leaned my head back and slightly to the side, exposing the pulse point at my throat to his view.

He rose and stepped towards me. His eyes were still glowing, and I was still unable to look away. The closer he came, the more I could feel his need for me, and the greater became my own desire to give myself to him.

I am certain that, what with his hunger and my own unwillingness to prevent him, he would have taken my blood, and I would have welcomed the loss of every single ounce. However, at the very moment when Holmes reached me, there was a knock at the door of our sitting-room, which brought us both back to our senses with a start in my case, and a suppressed snarl in Holmes'.

Mrs Hudson entered the room, blissfully unaware that she had interrupted a very delicate moment, to announce that we had a visitor. And thus, we had barely time to collect ourselves before the portly shape of Mycroft Holmes came through the door.

The watery grey eyes of Sherlock's elder brother quickly scanned the room and everything in it in that unconscious, abstracted fashion that I had come to know so well from my friend. Then he fixed his brother with the same stare, frowned, looked at me, frowned again, and finally subsided onto the closest chair with an air of confusion that did not suit him at all.

Sherlock, I noticed, had avoided Mycroft's eyes by busying himself at the chemical equipment, and, attuned to him as I still was after having been mesmerised by him so recently, I could feel that he had to make an effort to contain his unsated hunger and act with his normal nonchalance. Finally, however, he could no longer avoid eye contact. "Hello, Mycroft," he said, smiling a closed-lipped smile. "This is a surprise."

"Sherlock," Mycroft acknowledged the greeting, and it seemed to me that there was an undertone of doubt in his voice, almost as if he had originally intended the name to be voiced like a question. The older Holmes brother was silent for some seconds longer, still frowning fiercely, before he finally burst out, "What the deuce has happened to you, Sherlock?"

My friend regarded his brother in silence for a long moment, and I could see a rapid succession of thoughts reflected upon his expressive countenance: speculation, worry, compassion, and finally, resolution. "I'm afraid I cannot tell you, brother mine," he said tonelessly.

"Then something has happened," Mycroft persisted, still looking supremely confused. "A medical problem, from the way your fellow lodger is hovering, serious enough to leech all the colour from your skin and even keep you from smoking for an extended period - none of your pipes have been touched for weeks -, but not so serious as to keep you from your chemical tinkering. Yet you have changed significantly and in ways that no medical condition that I can think of could possibly account for. Most curious. And what the deuce is that?" He reached out a fat hand and grabbed the brown glass bottle containing the pig's blood off the table in front of him.

Sherlock made an involuntary motion to take the precious bottle back - I could feel that his hunger was acute -, but he checked the impulse and turned it into a shifting upon his stool.

His brother, of course, had noticed. Scowling fiercely at Sherlock, he removed the stopper and carefully sniffed the contents.

A silence ensued during which none of us moved. Mycroft could not possibly mistake the blood for anything but what it was, and I, for one, was curious to find out whether he would draw the correct conclusions, while Sherlock very pointedly did not offer any false explanation for his appearance or for the presence of the blood, and his brother simply sat staring at the bottle in his hand.

Finally, Mycroft blinked, and then he turned as white as a sheet.

I was out of my chair and had rescued the bottle from his limp grasp with one hand while holding a tumbler of brandy out to him with the other before he had managed to draw a complete breath. He took the glass with a less than steady hand and downed the contents in one gulp.

Sherlock, I noticed, was smiling with fraternal pride and a hint of triumph. "I should have known that you, of all people, would be able to see the truth. Nevertheless, I think this is the first time I have managed to surprised you since I demonstrated my knowledge of animal traces when I was four."

Mycroft stared at him with no attempt to conceal his astonishment. The dash of brandy had brought a little colour back to his cheeks, but he was still looking rather shocked. "It is true, then." His voice was barely audible.

My friend raised one wry eyebrow. "Most certainly. The realm of the impossible is smaller than we suspected. And before you ask, no, it was not my choice."

"How?" Mycroft asked weakly.

Sherlock raised his hand and gave a peremptory wave towards the bottle, which I readily handed to him. "I cannot tell you that either," he stated, taking up a pipette and dipping it in a test tube containing a clear liquid, of which he then carefully added three drops to the blood.

"When?" Mycroft asked, his voice a little firmer, but his face still full of astonishment.

"On the twenty-seventh, or rather the twenty-eighth, since it was past midnight," Sherlock said precisely, concentrating on his task. He stoppered the bottle, gave it a vigorous shake, and drained the contents in a single draught.

Mycroft gave a small gagging sound and turned to me, his watery grey eyes full of entreaty. "Doctor, is he... all right?"

"As far as I can tell, and considering the circumstances, he could not be better," I said, unable to resist adding, "Now that he has finally eaten."

Sherlock raised an amused eyebrow at me. "You needn't worry, brother mine," he then told Mycroft. "My well-being is provided for. As you can see, Watson's mother hen tendencies are still in place and fully functional, regardless of the status of his charge being technically dead."

"Well, I wouldn't need to exert those tendencies quite so often if you took better care of yourself," I rejoined.

He opened his mouth, but whatever he had intended to say went unuttered. "You are absolutely correct, Watson," he said instead, to my astonishment, "especially in view of what almost happened before my brother graced us with his visit."

"No need to browbeat yourself, old fellow," I immediately strove to soothe his conscience. "It would have been my choice as well." Not only my choice, I admitted to myself silently, but my fondest desire.

He glanced at me sharply, but then he decided to let the matter rest. "Let's not chance it happening again," he merely said before turning his attention back to Mycroft.

The older Holmes brother had watched our exchange in silence, that perplexed frown still marring his strong features. Now, he shook himself briefly as if attempting to re-settle the facts about the world as he had known it that had become upset by this new knowledge. "Be that as it may," he said briskly, "I have not come here to socialise, of course."

"Of course," Sherlock could not resist interjecting. "You have been in conference with the Prime Minister, that much is glaringly obvious, and in his private chambers no less. I deduce some incident having occurred that has no connection with his official work, and rather than run around yourself in order to clear it up, you've come to me. Very well. What is it this time? Blackmail? Another highly confidential paper that has disappeared?"

Mycroft did not even ask his brother how he had reached his conclusion. "Murder, Sherlock," he intoned. "The premier's chief butler was found dead this morning in his second floor room, which was locked from the inside, key still in the lock, all windows securely fastened. Because of the highly improper position of the body - nude in his bed and showing evidence of having engaged in deviant activities - His Lordship has no wish to call upon any members of the official forces to investigate this scandalous affair. I thought you might..."

Sherlock smiled with the eager expression of a predator who has caught sight of his prey. "A locked room mystery, and a potential scandal in Lord Bellinger's home? My dear brother, how could I resist?"

 


	7. Transformation

 

Life is unfathomably strange, I mused as I followed in Holmes' wake the way I had hundreds of times before. Here we were, amateur investigators on the surface, yet far different from the image we presented - my friend because of what he was, and I because of what I knew.

Upon entering the scene of the current crime, however, we were presented with an unexpected problem. As we ascended the stairs to Lord Bellinger's residence and were about to enter the building through the front door, Holmes abruptly halted with an expression of surprise and confusion. The door was open - we were expected - but our arrival had not been communicated to the household yet, so there was nobody to meet us at the door.

Normally, we would have just walked in regardless. Now, however, this turned out to be not an option. Holmes did not move beyond the threshold. He could not.

"Fascinating," he muttered, staring at the doorway. "It's like a barrier, an invisible wall. I thought he'd exaggerated, but it's true."

'He', in such cases, as I had learned, usually referred to Holmes' maker.

We were saved from a potentially embarrassing situation by his Lordship's junior butler asking us in. As soon as the invitation had left the man's lips, Holmes easily stepped into the stately house as if nothing had ever been amiss, muttering about not all things turning out to be entirely to his advantage.

Upon our arrival in the servant's quarters, my friend immediately began his investigation, a familiar sight and familiar routine, and yet, again, everything was different that day.

Most notable to the casual but informed observer would be the fact that Holmes took frequent drafts from his hip-flask as he moved back and forth across the sunlit room. There were no observers, casual or otherwise, yet I cringed to think what this behaviour might do to my friend's reputation in the long run. I knew that he required a steady supply of blood in order to get through the day without suffering visible burns, but that was hardly a fact that might be communicated to those who would, before too long, call him a lush.

I pushed that problem to the back of my mind, resolving to deal with it when it arose, in order to focus on the present.

There were other changes from Holmes' past investigative behaviour. His movements were faster. He lingered less over the places that contained clues visible to human eyes. He used his nose more. He touched objects and closed his eyes as if gathering information from them that were inaccessible by the normal senses.

One thing, however, had not changed. I could tell from his expression when he had found his man - within five minutes after he had begun his investigation.

By that time, Lord Bellinger himself appeared upon the scene, asking in a hushed voice whether the great detective had solved it yet.

Holmes straightened from where he was bent over a piece of clothing and arranged his face into an expression of artful regret. "I must confess, my Lord, that I'm completely baffled. The perpetrator must have vanished into thin air according to the clues I can find, which, of course, is impossible. You may have to accustom yourself to the thought that this is a crime even I cannot solve."

There was much polite remonstrance and even an offer for remuneration from his Lordship's side, but Holmes remained adamant.

I was less concerned about my friend's reputation suffering from this apparent failure to solve the crime than about the fact that this conversation was taking place in a, by now, almost completely sunlit room. Holmes had refrained from using his hip-flask while Lord Bellinger was present, which was beginning to take its toll. Though Holmes had moved out of the direct sunlight, his increasing frequency in blinks and the noticeable reddening of his eyes still told me that it was about time I interfered.

Before I could do so, however, Holmes took matters into his own hand. "And now, my Lord, I must take my leave. Again, apologies for not being of help. You can rest assured that this is not a situation I relish."

"I'll, uh, go ahead an order a cab for us, shall I, Holmes?" I interjected, as the thought of my friend being exposed to the sun outside for any length of time was an unpleasant one.

He nodded, which told me more about the severity of his condition than words could have done.

I left the two of them to say their good-byes. Fortunately, I managed to hail a cab that was passing by just as I was stepping out onto the road, and five minutes later, Holmes and I were seated inside its blessedly dark interior.

"I assume that you have, in fact, solved it?" I asked.

Holmes put down his flask with an expression of relief. "You assume correctly," he said, dabbing delicately at his lips with his handkerchief. "You're also assuming correctly that we are dealing with a murderer possessed of supernatural abilities, which, as far as we know, means precisely one person."

"Your maker."

"Quite so. He was careful not to leave any traces, but he touched a few things here and there while committing his crime. These objects imprinted themselves upon him, allowing me to see what happened. Apparently, any object retains the impression of the person that last touched them. Very handy for detective work, that."

As amazing as that was, I managed to push it aside in favor of the current problem. "What are you going to do?"

"He committed murder, Watson. I doubt it was the first time, or that he will not do so again. His acts are a danger to all supernatural beings, since they may potentially direct human eyes towards us. He must be stopped. Human justice will never find him. But I will."

I confess I felt a shiver at these words. Never before had Holmes contemplated violence with this degree of cold-blooded determination. By this I do not mean that I disagreed with his reasoning; only with the manner he uttered it. "Are you sure that a confrontation is the only way?"

He threw me a glance. "What else would you suggest? Having Lestrade or Gregson arrest the man and risk their lives in the process?"

"No, of course not. But if you're right, and if there is some other kind of jurisdiction in place for… your kind, shouldn't you hand this over to them instead of taking matters into your own hands?"

"Even supposing that I am right, which is by no means a given, I have no idea how to approach them, or even to identify them. As far as I'm aware, my maker and myself are the only supernatural beings that exist in London. There may certainly be more - after all, my maker owes his own undead existence to one of them. But while I endeavour to find even one more undead in this teeming throng of millions of Londoners, Mr. Carpenter, former printer and current murderer, is free to continue committing his atrocities. No, Watson, I'm afraid it's up to me. As always, though, there is some truth in what you say. I shouldn't take this lightly, even if the fellow is technically already dead."

"So, what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to confront him. After dark, when he is able to answer to his crimes."

I did not much care for the sound of that. "And is able to fight you."

He smiled grimly. "He is welcome to try. Your point, however, once more is a valid one, which is why you are going to stay behind. I won't risk your life, my dear Watson."

I liked that even less. "Do you really think I shall let you go into a confrontation without backup?"

"Oh yes, because I am asking you to. Consider this: If the fellow does manage to overwhelm me, do you think that you would stand a chance?"

"Not using hand-to-hand, no. But I can always put a bullet between his eyes. May not kill him, but will certainly slow him down."

He raised his eyebrows. "Unless he simply orders you to drop your gun. But I can see that you're going to be difficult about this, dear fellow. If I cannot persuade you to stay behind, by all means, do come along."

He did not mention that he, too, was perfectly capable of bending me to his will. I considered it a hallmark of his great character that this was apparently not even an option.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock Holmes had spent the rest of the day in his coffin, gathering what energies he could from that peculiar state between un-death and true death. At dusk, he emerged, looking alert, rested, and focused on the task ahead.

"There is still time to change your mind about accompanying me, Watson," said he.

I pocketed my revolver in a demonstrative manner. "My mind is quite made up, Holmes."

He gave me a brisk nod. "Very well, then. Let us go."

We took a cab to Whitechapel. Upon alighting, Holmes set off at a brisk pace, traversing the narrow alleys like a bloodhound on the scent, hardly paying attention to those he was passing. I did my best to keep up, noting the disreputable state of the people in the streets, the squalor of the buildings, becoming more and more aware of how much of an outsider I was here.

Nobody accosted us, which may have had as much to do with Holmes' manner as with the purposeful way we strode through the throngs of people, moving in what I finally perceived to be a systematic pattern, before at length reaching a public house.

Outside, Holmes hesitated. "Surely he is not so obvious," he muttered to himself. "So many places he could be; surely not here... No matter. Let's make certain."

We entered. I noted that, this time, there was no hesitation for Holmes at the threshold.

"Public house," he replied softly, as was his wont, to my unasked question. "It's only private residences that seem to present a problem."

Inside, we happened upon our quarry almost immediately. Even I, who had never seen the chap before, could not fail to recognize him simply by his abrupt reaction to the sight of my friend.

Jumping to his feet, the man - vampire? - shrank back to the wall, eyes fixed on my friend as though he were the devil himself. "What do you want?" he almost wailed.

"Oh, please, Mr. Carpenter," Holmes said. "It's quite obvious from your manner that you know very well what I want." There was a brief pause during which I could feel the air start to crackle as if charged by electricity. When my friend continued, his voice seemed to coalesce within my brain without bothering to pass through my ears. "But in case it isn't clear: I want you to accompany me to somewhere a little more private. Now."

The effect on the chap was instantaneous and undeniable. Nodding weakly, he rose to his feet, wide eyes fixed on my friend.

Once we had stepped outside of the public house, Holmes turned to me. "Take a cab, Watson. Follow us to Hampstead Heath. But take care, old friend." With that, he turned his full attention back to his quarry.

I knew enough by then not to question him, except for a small detail. "Holmes, what about you? Aren't you using the cab as well?"

He smiled briefly. In the dim light afforded by the nearby street lamp, I could see his canines glint. That, together with the stark shadows pooling underneath his brows and cheekbones, served to make him appear near inhuman. "We shall be going there directly. As the bat flies."

What happened next was sufficient to remind me that, however inured I might consider myself to be by now to the fantastic and, at times, inconceivable situation we found ourselves in, there was still room for surprises: My friend vanished before my eyes. From one second to the next, I could no longer see him. In his place, there was a suggestion of dense mist, and from it, a small dark shape fluttered up and away into the darkness beyond the street lights, closely followed by a second one.

I stared after them. Stranger than fiction, indeed.

 

* * *

 

Finally, I gathered myself enough to flag down a cab to take me to the Heath. The  journey seemed interminable, giving me time to consider the flying speed of bats in relation to that of a horse-drawn carriage, to ask questions such as where Holmes' body mass could possibly have vanished to during his transformation from human to bat, whether his clothes had transformed with him, or what I would find when I arrived at my destination. It would not be the first time that Holmes had sent me on a fool's errand in order to protect me, after all.

But I need not have worried about that at least. As soon as I had left the cab behind me to enter the Heath for more than a few dozen steps, I could hear something that normally had no place this close to the heart of London, even in an area as near to a natural state as Hampstead Heath - the sound of wolves fighting.

So - bats, and wolves. What else would I have to expect?

Carefully, I followed the snarls and yelps of pain, my right hand finding and drawing my old service revolver.

They were not hard to find; in fact, their fight had taken them very near to the place where Holmes had tried to end his existence by facing the sunlight. Completely focused on their mortal combat, neither of the two vampires were taking pains to remain inconspicuous. I could only hope that whatever nocturnal wanderers traveled the Heath at this hour would steer well clear of this part of it. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, I saw that both wolves' eyes were glowing, that they were moving quite unlike wolves normally did, and I also noticed that they were both injured.

That was when I realized, with a sinking heart, that I could not tell my friend apart from his maker. I would not be able to intervene for fear of harming Holmes by accident.

It did not help that neither of the combatants would stay in one shape for longer than a few seconds at a time. Whenever one of them was in a hold by the other, he would vanish, turning into mist or into a bat, in order to find a new position from which to attack, changing back into wolf shape so as to be able to use his teeth on his enemy.

I was well aware that Holmes was one of the best fighters I have ever known, and that if this were a normal fight, he would certainly emerge from this conflict the undisputed victor. But this was no normal fight. This was the clash of two supernatural beings using means beyond mortal man, using physical strength and speed far beyond mortal man. And Holmes, for all his ability to adapt and learn quickly, had only had a few short weeks to grow into his own abilities, whereas his maker had had years.

Nor was this a fight that would cease when one combatant surrendered. This was obviously a fight to the death; to, as my friend had put it, 'final death'. And I, though armed and determined, was absolutely useless, condemned to await the outcome helplessly while doing nothing but hope that Holmes would be the one to walk away from this.

Or, failing that, to avenge him, even if it cost me my own life.

I do not know how long I stood, shivering with cold and nerves, holding my useless revolver, watching the two vampires do their best to tear each other to pieces. They were slowing, both wounded, taking longer and longer to shift from one shape to the next, even as their wounds were taking longer and longer to heal.

Finally, there was a high, wailing cry, and one of the wolves collapsed, exactly like a burnt-out log collapses in a hearth-fire, losing shape and practically dissolving in a burst of red sparks. The other wolf recoiled with a howl even as the stricken one turned to grey ashes, most decidedly dead.

Trembling, I trained my revolver at the survivor, my heart in my throat. "Show me your human shape," I ground out, "or I swear I'll put a bullet between your eyes."

The wolf stared at me, panting. Then it changed.

Weak with relief, I watched Holmes' familiar features coalescing. My poor friend was badly wounded, though, barely able to keep himself upright. As soon as the transformation was complete, he collapsed onto the trampled ground, curling up around himself and half turning his face away from me. A part of me that was not frozen with horror dully noted that he was indeed fully clothed once more.

I was beside him in an instant. "Holmes…?"

"Get away from me, Watson, if you love me," he ground out, the words barely comprehensible.

Struck with a sense of déjà vu, I stood my ground. "No."

He raised his head and stared at me.

I realized that this was it - the very situation I had conjectured. My friend was in no condition to restrain himself. He needed me too much. There would be no stopping in time. And yet, I felt no fear, only a wild exhilaration at having reached the point where our two lines, travelling in parallel for so long, would finally join one another.

These thoughts crossed my mind during the bare fraction of a second before, with superhuman effort, Holmes was upon me. After that, of course, there was nothing but the swoon.

 

* * *

 

I must have lost consciousness, for I remember opening my eyes from profound blackness to the sight and sound of my friend, face streaked with bloody tears, imploring me to drink.

I have always done as he asked, so I did this as well.

There was a burst of intense pleasure the likes of which I had never felt before, not even when he fed from me. I wanted it to go on and on.

Sherlock Holmes was holding me in his arms. That was his wrist at my lips. His essence was filling me with a kind of delight that mortal man can never feel.

After an eternity of being filled with liquid pleasure, he bade me to stop.

I did, even though it was the most difficult thing I had ever done.

And then I fell into the last sleep I ever slept.

 

* * *

 

**Epilogue - 130 Years Later**

 

"'The Sussex Vampire'?" Sherlock echoes my suggestion with an expression of profound skepticism.

I look up from my laptop. "It's a statement," I say. "It will let the public know, once and for all, that nothing supernatural exists."

"I realize the fiendish cunning of it, John," he returns. "I simply think that posting it means drawing quite unnecessary attention to a topic that mortal society currently is not particularly dwelling on. We've both been taking excellent precautions. This has been going on for decades, after all. There's no acute need for such subterfuge in the first place. Besides, we're living in a time where those atrocious 'Twilight' movies are a thing."

"Plausible deniability, Sherlock."

"Oh, please. People think whatever they want anyway, no matter what you choose to write in your blog."

"In that case, publishing it wouldn't hurt, would it?"

He scowls, realizing I've checkmated him. "Oh, well, fine. If you must."

"Thank you." I continue typing, watching my friend from the corner of my eye as he stalks back and forth in our flat, muttering to himself.

More typing from me, more muttering from him. Finally, I'm fed up. Or rather, I'm not, and I'm guessing, neither is he. "Sherlock."

He finally looks at me after I've said his name two more times. "What?"

"How about a light lunch?"

He makes the face I privately call his 'what a strange concept' face. "Now? But we've just eaten."

"I've eaten a few hours ago. You, however, haven't eaten at all tonight. So, lunch. Now."

He still looks unconvinced, but I remain adamant. I've had a lot of practise.

Just then, his phone pings an incoming text. Throwing me a look, he picks it up. "Mycroft is requesting an audience on the roof of the Diogenes. 'A case in our special purview.' Seems we'll have to postpone lunch." He goes to open a window.

Another Kindred ignoring the laws, then. I scowl. These cases usually degenerate into blood hunts and violence, giving Sherlock little opportunity to exercise his mind. "Mycroft should really start taking care of those things himself," I mutter, but I rise to join my friend by the window regardless. I never willingly allowed him to leave without backup, not two centuries ago, and certainly not now.

We change. And then we fly out the window, not quite hand in hand, while underneath, London slumbers on in blissful ignorance.

 

 

**The End**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this is the finalization of my last WIP (after 8 years, no less). I hope the long wait was worth it. Thanks for staying with it!


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